‘I need to be here’: Tylee Craft goes from wide receiver to assistant coach after cancer diagnosis
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Anna Katherine Clemmons
Mitch Mason sat in his mother’s hospital room in Tampa. It was June 11, 2024 — his birthday — and his phone buzzed with text messages. He’d flown to Florida from Chapel Hill, where he has served as UNC football’s team chaplain for 13 years.
“How are you holding up?” friends texted as Mason sat with his mother. She was unconscious and on a ventilator. And she was dying.
One player had sent a steady stream of messages throughout the day.
How you doin’, OG? UNC wide receiver Tylee Craft wrote.
Chap, I always got you, and you got me.
“That meant a little more, because I knew he was dealing with sickness,” Mason says.
Tylee was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer on March 14, 2022. He has undergone numerous treatments, but the cancer still spread through his body and brain. He has endured multiple ER stays. Arriving at UNC at a healthy 200 pounds at 6-foot-5, Tylee has lost more than 20 pounds, gained weight back, and lost it again.
“To be facing that, and yet to be more concerned with telling everyone else, ‘Keep fighting, I got you,'” Mason says. “That’s just Tylee.”
Tylee has refused to let cancer take over his life. He is enrolled in graduate courses toward his master’s in applied professional studies after graduating in May with a bachelor’s degree in exercise and sports science/sports administration. He wore a TyleeStrong T-shirt under his gown as he walked across the graduation stage.
Football is what brings Tylee joy. He shifted from active player to student coach this summer. He is at almost every meeting, workout and practice, sometimes walking directly to the facility from the hospital. He was elected to the team’s leadership council this season.
His diagnosis is one no one wishes for. And yet, it has given him a new purpose, a platform and the ability to make an impact he had never imagined.
Tylee first played football at age 7. Long and lean, he always seemed taller than everyone else, his mother, September Craft, says. Initially, his coach put him at quarterback. But he wanted to play receiver.
“I love catching passes, scoring touchdowns, running,” Tylee said. “Just having fun with my teammates, making memories.”
He totaled close to 1,000 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns in his last two high school seasons. He also excelled in the classroom, taking honors classes and graduating high school a semester early.
“Tylee was always a guy we could count on,” Sumter High School football coach Mark Barnes said. “[A] 4.0 GPA, an overachiever in every aspect. These are comments that we tend to embellish when people are going through hardships. But Tylee was that guy.”
Tylee and September visited Chapel Hill on a Friday in March during his junior year; that Monday morning, UNC wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway called Tylee and offered him a scholarship. Two days later, he called Galloway and told him he wanted to be a Tar Heel.
“It was just a different feeling here,” September said. “Like we’d known each other for years.”
Tylee played in seven games in the 2020 season, primarily on special teams. He struggled with turf toe before fall camp and appeared in four games in 2021.
In December of 2021, Tylee returned home to Sumter for a few days before Christmas. He told his mom he’d been having a lot of back pain, which worsened over the next month. Tylee always smiled. He was easygoing, calm and steady. The only time September had seen him cry was after losing a playoff game in high school. But on a FaceTime call on March 9, he was crying.
Later that day, Tylee was riding in an elevator at the UNC football facility alongside Sally Brown, head coach Mack Brown’s wife. Suddenly, he doubled over in pain. Sally opened the elevator doors and called for help. Defensive line coach Tim Cross was standing in the hall and helped Sally lift Tylee. They rushed him to the ER.
Dr. Jared Weiss, the section chief of thoracic and head/neck oncology at UNC Chapel Hill Hospital, was not scheduled to be on call. But an oncology fellow asked him to come in and examine a young patient who had just arrived.
“What struck me most was how incredibly supported he was,” Weiss said. “I don’t think I’ve ever before or since seen a little ER space so packed with people.”
Five days later, Weiss told Tylee and September that Tylee had metastatic Stage 4 cancer in his lungs, liver and spine. He would need to start treatment immediately.
“The doctor said that if Tylee didn’t come into the hospital, he would’ve passed away in less than a month,” September said. “He was basically dying and he didn’t know it.”
The median lung cancer patient is 70 years old. Despite the stigma around lung cancers, many of those diagnosed are not regular smokers or, like Tylee, have never smoked. According to the American Lung Association (ALA), the five-year survival rate of metastatic lung cancer patients is about 18.6%.
Tylee took the semester off from school. His initial treatments were once every three weeks. Aside from a rash on his hands and feet, hiccups and fevers, Tylee says he has felt fine.
But each time he ran a fever, September had to rush Tylee to the hospital. He needed to stay for five days to ensure he didn’t have an infection. The hospital was still crowded due to COVID. Sometimes they had to wait 36 hours in the ER for a bed to open up. The beds were short, and Tylee was often uncomfortable.
After two treatments of four drugs (two chemotherapy and two immunotherapy), the cancer shrunk dramatically. But that summer, his cancer grew again. From August to December 2022, Tylee underwent a new type of chemotherapy. He focused on classes and football, attending every game he could. Though he wasn’t able to play, he still participated in drills when he felt well enough.
“You wouldn’t know to this day that he had cancer if you didn’t know,” Galloway said. “He carries himself greatly as far as, he comes to practice, he goes to meetings, he goes to get treatment, he comes back to practice. I’ll say, ‘You know, Tylee, you don’t have to be here.’ He’ll say, ‘Coach, I need to be here.'”
At one early-morning practice, Tylee stood on the sidelines, throwing up from his chemotherapy.
“Why don’t you head back to your apartment?” Mack Brown said. “I’ll get someone to drive you over there.”
“No. I need to be here, Coach,” Tylee told him.
His teammates knew he had cancer. But Tylee didn’t want it to be a focal point.
“He’ll have chemo at 6 a.m. and then be at practice,” wide receiver J.J. Jones said. “To see that was like, OK, his determination, his resilience — that spread throughout the team. He is such a motivational leader for everybody.”
Sally Brown and Tylee talked regularly. Tylee rarely asks for help, but sometimes, Sally says, he’ll send a subtle message. “If you happen to be near Cook-Out today, I’d love a Snickers milkshake,” he’ll text. “And I’ll just happen to be near there,” Sally Brown said, smiling.
Throughout 2023, Tylee underwent immunotherapy treatments. Initially, the results were positive. But by the fall of 2023, his cancer had grown again. Weiss found a clinical trial for a drug that sounded promising, but which had yet to receive FDA approval. Weiss and Tylee appealed to the company for use, and Weiss wrote an entire protocol for Tylee, who was the first patient to receive compassionate use of the drug. It, too, worked — for a time.
At each turn, he was calm, measured. He has not screamed or lashed out when scans show the cancer has spread. “Every patient is entitled to break down sometimes,” Weiss said. “To fall apart, to reconstruct. There’s nothing wrong with that — that’s human. But that’s not what Tylee did.”
In May of 2023, scans revealed the cancer had spread to his brain. That fall, Tylee took chemotherapy pills that had a higher chance of reaching the brain. Still, he was at practice, offering advice to the receivers when he didn’t feel well enough to play.
And then, he was asked to give another kind of advice. On Jan. 31, UNC tight end Cal Tierney underwent surgery for abnormal lymph nodes. Five days later, doctors diagnosed him with nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma. Tierney was shocked — his biopsies that fall had returned as normal.
He began four rounds of chemotherapy in late February. Before he began treatment, Tierney talked to Tylee. Brown said that in 36 years of head coaching, he’d never had an active player with cancer. Now, he had two. Tylee talked about what to expect in terms of side effects and offered to help in any way. “That gave me a big sense of security,” Tierney says. “Here’s a guy in our family, and some of the things he’s done, give or take, are what I’ll be going through.”
Tierney returned to his home in Charlotte for treatment. Scans on May 2 revealed the chemotherapy had worked and he was in remission.
“The biggest lesson I have learned from cancer and from Tylee is the silver lining,” Tierney said. “How much more opportunity can you find in what you’re going through? He’s the king of that, in how much he has made an impact on others. The easiest thing is to lay down and fall into despair. And that is the opposite of what he’s done.” Tylee finished a round of off-label chemotherapy over the summer, which shrunk the tumors in his body, but not his brain. The next step, Weiss says, is tumor-treating fields, where Tylee will wear a head covering to help control the cancer in his brain.
Like his prior treatment choices, which he has made in collaboration with Weiss, Tylee has repeatedly opted for non-standard therapies. Even if it means he is the first person to try this approach to cancer treatment.
“He’s making smart gambles, and they are paying off,” Weiss said. Or, in football vernacular, “he has connected Hail Marys at least three times.”
“And,” Weiss added, “that’s why he’s alive.”
Teammates said that once you know him well, Tylee is a jokester. “It’s like peeling back an onion one layer at a time once you get to the root of Tylee,” Jones said. “He’s just an amazing person.”
Tylee is introspective, his big, hazel eyes taking in what is happening around him. He loves movies, especially “Bad Boys.” He loves history and traveling. This past spring break, he visited Spain with his girlfriend.
But football remains his passion. Earlier this month, as the temperature hovered around 80 degrees at 10 a.m., the Tar Heels ran from the practice facility’s covered field onto the open-air turf. Players divided up by position group. Mack Brown wore a headset and spoke as he walked the field. “How can I get better today?” Brown encouraged his players to ask themselves.
As the receivers stood in one corner near an end zone, Tylee, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and a bucket hat, shadowed a catching drill. He talked with several receivers, motioning with his hands as he gave advice. He sometimes took a knee as the sun beat down. “I wish I was playing,” Tylee says, when asked what he is thinking as he watches games.
Brown walked over just before fourth-quarter drills. He put his arm around Tylee’s waist, smiling and talking.
“What I’ve told him is, we have so many young receivers, you be their coach,” Brown said. “We’re hoping he gets to play again, but I think after he gets cleared, he has to have a year to get his body back. So it’s a long road to play.”
September, who works as a deputy sheriff, frequently drives from Sumter to Chapel Hill. She and Tylee stay at the SECU Family House, an extended-stay home that provides housing, meals and transportation for UNC Hospital patients and family members dealing with serious illness. Mack and Sally Brown host a women’s football clinic each August, and they chose the SECU Family House as this year’s beneficiary. Both September and Tylee spoke at the Aug. 19 event, and several items were auctioned, including a framed jersey signed by Tylee. Sally said they hoped to bring in $30,000 total. They raised $93,000. (Tylee has also raised money for his own treatments through the sale of bracelets and T-shirts.)
Tylee is often asked to speak, whether to a group of young football players, a fellow cancer patient or in accepting an award. (He won the Disney Spirit Award in 2022, among others). “It’s just something I do,” Tylee said of speaking. “I wouldn’t say I like it. But I do it because I guess it makes [others] feel good.”
He has numerous tattoos which, he says, help tell his story.
One on his right shoulder reads, “Let Your Faith Be Bigger Than Your Fear.”
Mason, the team chaplain, met Tylee when the latter was a recruit. “The most soft-spoken and the biggest smile,” Mason said of his first impression.
He called Tylee “Cadillac” because “once he gets going, good Lord, he can go.” The two have remained close ever since. Some of his favorite moments, Mason says, have been praying together with September and Tylee. “No doctor has a timeline on what Tylee is going through — only God knows that,” September says. “It’s not up to us. And he is still fighting.”
Four years ago, Mason was diagnosed with idiopathic small fiber polyneuropathy, a rare disease where the body’s nerves break down. While the disease is not fatal, it affects his quality of life. On some days, Mason cannot walk or even move. He takes 20 medications daily and has infusions every 28 days.
In 2022, Mason was watching a baseball game on TV. As he watched the player standing in the batter’s box, he thought of Tylee. “Keep swinging,” he thought. Keep swinging has become a mantra for them both.
“But when I think about me, no, I think about what Tylee has to go through and his fight,” Mason said. “That is what gives me the encouragement to keep swinging.”
With a long-awaited ruling in the settlement of the House case expected this week, college sports are on the precipice of a major overhaul.
While Judge Claudia Ann Wilken still needs to issue a final approval on the long-awaited settlement, a decision is expected to arrive in the near future.
Changes will come quickly to the way college sports work if the settlement is formalized. Most prominent among them will be a change in how enforcement works, as the NCAA will no longer be in charge of traditional enforcement, and a CEO will soon be put in place with powers that never existed prior.
The CEO of college sports’ new enforcement organization — the College Sports Commission — will have the final say in doling out punishments and deciding when rules have been violated, according to sources, a level of singular power that never existed during the NCAA’s era of struggling to enforce its rules.
The CEO’s hire is expected to come quickly after the House settlement is finalized and has been spearheaded by the Power 4 commissioners from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Their pick to lead the new agency will quickly become one of the most powerful and influential people in college sports. The hiring of a new CEO of the College Sports Commission already is deep in the process, per ESPN sources. The conducting of the search process before the job can officially be created is indicative of how quickly the entire billion-dollar industry will have to transform before games are played again in August. Nothing can happen formally until the judge’s decision, but the process is well underway.
The CEO of the commission will be one of the faces of this new era of college athletics. Sources have told ESPN to expect the person to come from outside college athletics and not to be a household name to college sports fans. The CEO is expected to make seven figures and, once the settlement is in place and they are hired, will have significant authority.
“All the institutions are going to have new membership agreements that we’re all agreeing to these new rules,” said an industry source familiar with the process. “The CEO is going to have responsibility to make sure everything is enforced and the governance model is sound. It’s a critically important role for the future of college sports and college football.”
The CEO is expected to report to a board, which is expected to include the power conference commissioners. The CEO will also be in charge of essentially running the systems that have been put in place — LBi Software and accounting firm Deloitte have been lined up to handle salary cap management and to manage the clearinghouse for name, image and likeness.
With the NCAA no longer involved with traditional enforcement, it will mark a distinct industry shift. (The NCAA will still deal with issues such as academics and eligibility.)
According to sources, a vision of what this leader could look like, and the extent of the position’s powers, is illustrated in drafts of so-called association documents that all schools are expected to sign to formalize the new enforcement entity. Basically, the schools need to agree that they’ll follow the rules.
While sources caution the documents that have been circulated are still in draft stage, sources say the draft includes language that the CEO will make “final factual findings and determinations” on violations of rules. The CEO will also “impose such fines, penalties or other sanctions as appropriate,” in accordance with the rules.
The schools have to accept these rulings “as final,” with the exception being if a school or athlete wants to challenge the discipline. They’d be required, per sources, “to engage in the arbitration process,” which is expected to be the sole recourse.
Per sources, when cases do end up in arbitration, under the procedures that govern arbitration, subpoena power is a potential option via the discovery process — an authority that was not available during NCAA investigations.
As college sports have zigzagged to where they are thanks to the direction of myriad lawsuits and rulings, the association agreement could also include a clause where the schools “agree to waive any right to a jury trial with respect to all disputes arising out of or relating to this agreement.” That notion would still need to be accepted by all the schools, and it’s not expected to prevent lawsuits from entities outside of the schools.
It’s worth noting that the lawsuits that have brought major changes to NCAA rules in recent years have started with attorneys general or with athletes. Congress is expected to still be needed to help create a legal framework for the new system to function without being tripped up by the current patchwork of state laws.
Enforcement has long been a thorn for the NCAA, which is now offloading one of its most controversial and least effective departments. All schools agree with enforcement as an ideal, but the issues come once the enforcement is enacted on them or their athletes.
Few coaches this generation have seen NCAA enforcement as an effective threat to follow the rules.
“It all starts with enforcement, and I’ve said this for a long time, ‘Until we have an enforcement arm put into place, we’re always going to be working sideways,'” Ohio State coach Ryan Day told ESPN on the “College GameDay” podcast recently. “I feel like before we set a rule, before we do anything, we have to put a structure in place where we can enforce rules on and off the field.”
The new organization looks to have expedited timelines and a highly compensated CEO to be the face of the decisions. (The NCAA used a committee on infractions.)
The drumbeat leading to the settlement is indicative of the past generations of behavior, as schools have been rushing to spend outside of the expected cap, with frontloading so significant that the highest-paid basketball roster is expected to have compensation totaling close to $20 million and football rosters are expected to be in the $40 million range.
Will schools fall in line once rules are put into place? Will the threat of enforcement be enough to settle down the landscape? It’s difficult for coaches to imagine player salaries going backward for 2026.
The ultimate deterrent will be stiff and consistent penalties to deter rule-breaking behavior, which have been elusive historically because of lack of NCAA enforcement prowess and the lengthy process of enforcement.
Purdue AD Mike Bobinski told ESPN in March that the punishments need to “leave a mark,” and he mentioned the New Orleans Saints’ Bountygate sanctions as an example of the type of punishment that changed behavior. (Then-Saints coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 season as part of the penalties.)
“We’ve screwed this thing up now to the point where we have to be willing to draw a line in the sand, and that will create some pain,” Bobinski said. “There’s no two ways about it, and we’ll find out who’s just going to insist on stepping over the line. But if they do, you got to deal with it forcefully and quickly.”
He added that the Big Ten has put a lot of thought and conversation into this, as he said the mindset has to be changed to where coaches and programs can’t consider breaking the rules “worth it.”
Bobinski added: “People are working hard on this thing. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or it’s going to be accepted right out of the box, but I’d like to think we’ve got a chance at least to do it well.”
ESPN reporter Dan Murphy contributed.
Following the Florida Panthers‘ Game 7 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday, the NHL’s final four is official: The defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers will take on the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals, while the Dallas Stars face the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals.
This Eastern matchup is a rematch of the 2023 conference finals, won by the Panthers in a sweep. Can Carolina win this time, or will Florida head back to the Stanley Cup Final for a third straight year?
To help get you up to speed before the series begins Tuesday, we’re here with key intel from ESPN Research, wagering info from ESPN BET and more.
Paths to the conference finals:
Hurricanes: Defeated Devils in five, Capitals in five
Panthers: Defeated Lightning in five, Maple Leafs in seven
Leading playoff scorers:
Hurricanes: Seth Jarvis (four goals, six assists), Sebastian Aho (three goals, seven assists)
Panthers: Brad Marchand (three goals, nine assists), Eetu Luostarinen (three goals, nine assists)
Schedule:
Game 1: Panthers at Hurricanes | May 20, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 2: Panthers at Hurricanes | May 22, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 3: Hurricanes at Panthers | May 24, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 4: Hurricanes at Panthers | May 26, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 5: Panthers at Hurricanes | May 28, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 6: Hurricanes at Panthers | May 30, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Game 7: Panthers at Hurricanes | June 1, 8 p.m. (TNT)
Series odds:
Panthers: -125
Hurricanes: +105
Stanley Cup odds:
Panthers: +250
Hurricanes: +300
Matchup notes from ESPN Research
Hurricanes
The Hurricanes reached the conference finals for the sixth time in franchise history and third time in the past six years. Carolina’s three conference finals appearances since 2019 are tied with the Edmonton Oilers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Vegas Golden Knights for the second most in the NHL. The Dallas Stars have gone four times in the past six years.
Logan Stankoven is expected to make his Eastern Conference finals debut, after he appeared in the Western Conference finals with the Stars last year in his first NHL season. He will join Ville Leino (2009 and 2010) as the only players to play in both the Eastern and Western Conference finals in their first two seasons in the NHL (since 1994).
The Hurricanes have lost 12 straight games in the conference finals round. Their last win was Game 7 in 2006 vs. the Buffalo Sabres, when now-coach Rod Brind’Amour scored the eventual winning goal on a power play with 8:38 left in the third period after a puck-over-glass penalty. That 12-game losing streak includes being swept by the Panthers in 2023.
Carolina won its 10th playoff series under Brind’Amour since 2019; only the Lightning (11) have more series wins during that span.
Andrei Svechnikov‘s series-clinching goal 18:01 into the third period is the second-latest series-clinching goal in regulation in franchise history. Eric Staal scored 19:28 into the third period in Game 7 of the 2009 first round at the New Jersey Devils.
With their series win over Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals in the second round, the Hurricanes became the first team to eliminate the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer since the 1997 Philadelphia Flyers, who ousted Wayne Gretzky and the New York Rangers in the conference finals. Brind’Amour, then with the Flyers, had the series-clinching goal.
Panthers
The Panthers advanced to their third straight conference finals with a 6-1 win over the Maple Leafs in Game 7 in Toronto. Florida joins the Dallas Stars in 2023-25, Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020-22, Chicago Blackhawks in 2013-15, Los Angeles Kings in 2012-14 and Detroit Red Wings from 2007-09 as the only teams in the salary cap era (since 2005-06) to make it to three straight conference finals.
Florida trailed 2-0 in the series before coming back to win 4-3, marking the first time in franchise history they’ve overcome a 2-0 series deficit in a best-of-seven playoff series (they had previously been 0-5). The Panthers are the seventh reigning Stanley Cup champions in the NHL’s expansion era (since 1967-68) to win a best-of-seven playoff round after facing a 2-0 series deficit.
The Panthers now have a 4-1 record in Game 7s, including 3-0 on the road, becoming the third franchise to win each of its first three road Game 7s (along with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Minnesota Wild).
Brad Marchand had three points for the Panthers (one goal, two assists), giving him 10 career points in Game 7s, moving ahead of Alex Ovechkin (eight) for the most Game 7 points among active players, and tied him with Paul Stastny and Jari Kurri for 10th place on the all-time list. Marchand’s three-point total gives him 37 career playoff points vs. the Maple Leafs, passing Alex Delvecchio (35) for the second most by any player against Toronto in their playoff history, behind Gordie Howe (53). Marchand improved to 5-0 against the Maple Leafs in Game 7s for his career, becoming the first player in NHL history to defeat one franchise in five winner-takes-all games.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice also stayed perfect in Game 7s as a head coach, improving to 6-0. He is one of two head coaches in NHL history to win each of his first six career Game 7s, along with current Dallas bench boss Peter DeBoer (9-0).
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Greg Wyshynski
No player in Stanley Cup playoff history has tormented an opponent the way Florida Panthers winger Brad Marchand has tormented the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Panthers eliminated the Maple Leafs 6-1 in Game 7 on Sunday night in Toronto, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals against the Carolina Hurricanes. Marchand became the first player in NHL history to defeat the same opponent in at least five winner-take-all games. He moved to a perfect 5-0 in Game 7s against the Maple Leafs — winning with the Boston Bruins in 2013, 2018, 2019 and 2024, before winning with the Panthers on Sunday.
Marchand had a goal and two assists in the victory.
“I grew up a Leafs fan. I enjoy playing against the Leafs. I enjoy interacting with fans. Like, it’s fun. It’s not something I’ll forever get to do,” he said after Game 7, which was Toronto’s seventh straight loss in a Game 7.
Marchand said that he hadn’t historically played well against Toronto in Game 7s. “It wasn’t me that beat them, it was our team,” he said. But Marchand was anything but a bystander in Florida’s Game 7 win. Marchand set up two goals — including the primary assist on Eetu Luostarinen‘s critical third-period goal just 47 seconds after Max Domi scored for the Maple Leafs — and tallied an empty-net dagger for his third goal of the playoffs.
With his three-point effort, Marchand is now second all time in career playoff scoring against the Maple Leafs with 37 points, trailing only Hockey Hall of Famer Gordie Howe (53).
“I think the thing about Toronto is that their fans are very in your face. They’re aggressive. They let you hear it all the time. So it’s just fun to interact [with them]. I interact with a lot of fans and I enjoy that part of it,” said Marchand, who also passed Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin (8) for the most career Game 7 points (10) among active players.
Boston traded Marchand, its captain, to Florida at March’s NHL trade deadline, ending a 16-year run with the Bruins that included a Stanley Cup championship in 2011 and two other trips to the Stanley Cup Final.
“It was his personality that I didn’t know,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “He’s moved into that Matthew Tkachuk ‘hate them’ [role]. That’s a horrible word, but it’s close. And then they get here and they’re the exact opposite person that you thought they were. He’s just a wonderful human being.”
The Panthers dominated the Leafs from the opening draw, carrying play in Game 7 after Toronto extended the series with a Game 6 road victory Friday night. After two periods, the Panthers held a 70-33 advantage in shot attempts. That included a 39-14 gap in the second period, when Florida scored its first three goals.
Marchand factored into two important ones. Just 4:03 after Seth Jones opened the scoring, Marchand’s shot was deflected by Luostarinen off of goalie Joseph Woll‘s pads, and center Anton Lundell was there to clean it up for his fourth goal of the playoffs to make it 2-0. In the third period, Marchand’s pass was tipped home by Luostarinen.
“There are moments that you need to enjoy. Careers fly by. I’ve been at it a long time. I’m very fortunate. But it’s almost over. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone by. I wish I was able to enjoy more moments,” Marchand said.
With the loss, the Maple Leafs suffered yet another postseason failure. Toronto hasn’t advanced past the second round since 2002. They infamously haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, the longest drought in the NHL for any franchise — including those that have never won a Cup in their existence.
After the game, Marchand was complimentary of this Toronto team. He said of all the Game 7s he has played against the Leafs, he was most nervous about this one because “they competed way harder than they ever have.” He felt criticism of this group, which might have played its last game together, was unwarranted.
“If you look at the heat this team catches, it’s actually really unfortunate. They’ve been working at building something really big here for a while,” he said. “They were a different brand of hockey this year, and they’re getting crucified. I don’t think it’s justified.”
That said, Marchand did have a little fun at Toronto’s expense on the TNT postgame show. When asked what the difference was in the Panthers locker room from Game 6 to Game 7, Marchand said “we just had that be-Leaf” — a winking reference to one of the rallying cries of Toronto fans.
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