Florida Panthers center Anton Lundell, right, skates with the puck as Toronto Maple Leafs right wing William Nylander defends during the third period last Thursday in Sunrise, Fla. (AP photo)

NEWARK, N.J. — A decade has passed since the Toronto Maple Leafs missed the playoffs, their nine-year streak the longest going in the NHL.

The Florida Panthers are back-to-back Stanley Cup champions who have made three consecutive trips to the final while qualifying in each of the past six seasons.

Unless something shockingly rare happens, neither one of the Eastern Conference mainstays will make it this spring, with lofty expectations derailed by major absences.

Toronto has seemingly never recovered from Mitch Marner not returning as a free agent and doing a sign-and-trade with Vegas to salvage some value for the perennial point-a-game-plus producer. Florida has been ravaged by injuries, no one more significant than captain Aleksander Barkov’s torn right ACL that has sidelined the do-it-all first-line center since training camp.

“The burden hasn’t gotten heavier,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “We’ve just had fewer men to shoulder it.”

With a quarter of the schedule left to go, players on either side are quick to point out there is a lot of hockey left. But the trade deadline is Friday, and each of these teams is expected to be a seller.

That is incredibly unfamiliar territory for a couple of contenders used to their general managers buying this time of year. Instead, players are skating on eggshells wondering what’s coming next.

“I don’t go sit around and talk to every guy (about) what they’re thinking, but they’re obviously thinking about it — it’s natural,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said. “The deadline’s around the corner here and there’s a lot of talk and noise, but you’ve got to block it out.”

Also being blocked out is how much of a herculean effort it would take to make up ground. Only eight teams in each conference get in. Toronto is sitting 13th and Florida 14th out of 16.

“This is a daunting task,” said Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk, who missed the first 47 games after surgery to repair a sports hernia and a torn adductor muscle and didn’t debut until Jan. 19.

Columbus, Washington, Ottawa and Philadelphia are all ahead in the standings and also on the outside looking in. Toronto is nine points back of the second and final wild-card spot with 21 games to play and Florida 10 back.

The Maple Leafs, who have not had long postseason runs like the Panthers but also have made the playoffs every year since Auston Matthews broke into the league, are not yet ready to publicly discuss what blew this season horribly off course.

“You can look at a lot of different factors,” Matthews said. “I’m not going to sit here and speculate on what went wrong.”

It’s more complicated than just missing Marner, though the collection of forwards GM Brad Treliving acquired to fill the void have not come close to doing so. Toronto has given up more goals than last season, scored slightly fewer and Berube has challenged players to bring more to the table.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL