SUNRISE, Fla. — Auston Matthews still has yet to score a playoff goal against the Florida Panthers.

The Maple Leafs will very likely need that to change if they’re to win two of the next three games and overcome the defending Stanley Cup champions, even if Matthews is doing plenty of good things otherwise.

Matthews didn’t score in five games in the second round of the 2023 playoffs against the Panthers, and he’s been held off the board in each of the first four games of this series.

But it’s not just the Panthers. In his last 20 playoff games, he has unusually rotten shooting luck at 3.7 percent. That’s three goals on 81 shots, with two of those goals coming in the first round against the Ottawa Senators.

“A little bit,” Matthews said, when asked if he was feeling snakebitten after an ugly 2-0 loss in Game 4. “I mean, the chances have been there. I think I’ve just got to do a better job bearing down on some of them.”

As Matthews would go on to point out, the Leafs are (sometimes) tilting the ice in his minutes. His line was the only one to do so in a positive manner on Sunday, even if they hardly generated anything at all. Shots were 2-1 for the Leafs in their nearly nine minutes.

“I think we’ve got one chance and it’s out of their end,” Matthew Knies, the left winger on Matthews’ line, told The Athletic. “I think we need second and third opportunities. I think we need to go low to high a little more. And then obviously hit the net — I feel like we’re missing the net a ton and that’s just killing our offence.”

Though it was Knies who missed the net on a short-handed breakaway in Game 4, missed shots have been part of the story of Matthews’ postseason, but not in an all-that-unusual way. Matthews takes a lot of shots and misses on a lot of them, too. It kind of comes with the territory of being a high-volume shooter. He has missed the net on almost 31 percent of his attempts in these playoffs. In the regular season, that number was almost 27 percent.

Matthews hasn’t had his usual shooting precision all season, though. He finished with a career-low 33 goals in 67 games. He scored just 15 of those at five-on-five, eight fewer than his previous low for any one season. He went particularly cold down the stretch, scoring only five times at five-on-five in the last 30 games — the same number as Max Domi and one less than Nick Robertson.

The Leafs need him to be more precise.

A penalty-filled first period didn’t allow the Leafs to get going at five-on-five early in Game 4.

“I think we let off the gas in the first, took some dumb penalties,” Knies said. “So I think it was all our doing, giving them chances, and I think that’s the reason it ended the way it did.”

What’s been interesting is who the Panthers eventually chose to defend Matthews and his line in Florida with home-ice advantage. Not their No. 1 line led by Aleksander Barkov. And not their No. 1 pair on defence either. Not after the Matthews line got the edge on them earlier in this series.

For the second game in a row, the Panthers used the pesky Brad Marchand-led unit to defend Matthews, Knies and Mitch Marner, and paired them up with the monster defensive pair of 6-foot-6 Niko Mikkola and 6-4 Seth Jones.

And for the second game in a row, it worked.

Once upon a time, it was Jones — and all that length — who helped slow Matthews down as a Columbus Blue Jacket during the 2020 postseason.

“I feel like a typical NHL defenceman nowadays is a big, lengthy guy, moves the puck well,” Knies said when asked about Mikkola and Jones. “That’s their whole D core, and that’s similar to our D core, too. That’s why it’s so hard to play against those guys.”

Matthews’ line has struggled mightily against the Mikkola-Jones combo: the Leafs have won just 23 percent of expected goals in 21.5 minutes of that matchup this series. They’ve scored twice (and given up two as well), but generated a total of two high-danger shot attempts.

In other words, the Leafs are getting nothing inside against those two oak trees. The Panthers are closing down time and space.

This isn’t just about Matthews, though. He isn’t getting the puck enough in the offensive zone with good opportunities to shoot it. Is that a style of play thing, the prioritization of low-to-high as Knies mentioned, and not puck possession? Is it Marner, the playmaker on the line, not creating enough for Matthews?

It’s probably a bit of both, and both things that need to improve for Matthews to get rolling.

Matthews pinpointed the forwards’ inability to help the group on defence break out of the defensive zone cleanly as the reason for the team’s general offensive struggles in Game 4.

“I think for the most part, throughout the four games, I think we’ve been winning shifts, generating chances against tough matchups,” Matthews said of his line. “But obviously you want to score — I want to score.”

The Leafs have still outscored the Panthers 5-2 when the Matthews line has been out there. Defensively, Matthews has been solid as ever. He has three assists in this series and eight overall in the playoffs. He has won over 57 percent of his draws, leads the team in takeaways, and shares the team lead with Marner for blocked shots by forwards across this postseason.

He is working hard. He is doing good things.

A dysfunctional power play hasn’t helped matters. The Leafs are 2-15 in the series, and one of those goals came from the second unit (via Max Pacioretty). The Leafs often struggled to even get set up in Game 4.

Matthews had one of the only quality looks all night, though he isn’t featured there in the same way he once was. There’s a case to be made that he isn’t optimized there, with much of the action running through Marner and William Nylander and then on down low to Knies and John Tavares. The Leafs don’t tee Matthews up like they once did.

Craig Berube has lots to ponder heading into Game 5 in Toronto. His bottom two forward lines need a shakeup. He might also consider whether the Leafs need a new recipe on that top unit, say by replacing Marner with Nylander. A move like that might provide a jolt.

It might also feel like panic. Changing up the matchups might be an easier tactic.

Though the Leafs coach won’t be able to fully keep the Matthews line away from Mikkola and Jones for the most part, he can decide if he wants that unit playing against Barkov again. That matchup went in the Leafs’ favour early on.

It would also ease things up for Tavares and Nylander on the second line (assuming they stay together). Those two struggled to create much going head-to-head with Barkov and fellow Selke Trophy finalist Sam Reinhart in games 3 and 4.

Tweaks can only do so much to mitigate the issue, though. Even in a down year, Matthews ranked third on the team in goals during the regular season, trailing only Nylander (45) and Tavares (38). Bobby McMann, the Leaf with the sixth-most goals (20), hasn’t scored in his last 21 games dating back to the end of the regular season, and Robertson, who was seventh (15), hasn’t been playing (which might change in Game 5).

Only one Leaf in the bottom six, Domi, has scored in this series.

The Leafs can’t afford for Matthews not to score, not for any prolonged period. They’re not deep enough for that.