The Panthers are winning games with doing 3 things extraordinarily well: Forecheck and puck support, along with timely physicality.
Their forechecking is so tenacious and well-structured that the leafs just can't move the puck out easily. And they play near perfectly as a 5 man unit in all three zones, passing the puck quickly tape-to-tape while moving their feet all the time. The leafs keep running out of gas chasing the puck around on defence.
I think I'm seeing a lot of similarities between how Florida and Seattle are playing. I know it's still early, but they just might face each other in SCF to make Bettman's worst nightmare come true.