Cooper and Keefe warn Lightning vs. Leafs could be violent and chaotic.

The Stanley Cup playoffs will get under way tomorrow for a number of teams across the National Hockey League and among those teams will be the Toronto Maple Leafs and the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning, who will be taking one another on in the first round of the tournament. 

Many pundits have expressed a belief that they expect fireworks in this series and expect it to be among the most exciting of the first round playoff matchups that we will see this year. It's one thing when those analyzing the game from the outside make such claims however, and another matter entirely when even the head coaches admit that they may be in for something special this time around.

Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe spoke to the media on Sunday and at one point admitted that he feels this could be a "borderline violent" series between the Leafs and the Lightning. Here's the full quote:

"Just because we have done it," said Keefe when asked why he thinks his team will be up for a physical series. "We've done it through the season and we expect it. We got a taste of it it when we were down in Tampa and I've watched them play through their playoff runs and I've rewatched their playoff runs since, they're going to be very physical. They're going to be very competitive. I look at their playoffs, especially in their first round last year, they definitely led the league in skirmishes after the whistle and things that they are trying to do after the whistle, stuff like that. There's all sorts of stuff. I expect it to be physical, borderline violent series in a lot of ways and our guys will be ready for that.

It would be one thing if it was one team expressing these thoughts, but it sounds like the Lightning are also expecting much of the same. Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said on Sunday that the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is "chaos" and indicated that he believes their matchup with the Leafs will be no exception.

"We’ve been through all the wars," said Cooper who has won back to back Stanley Cup championships. "Just rewind the tape to last year at this time when we played Florida. I always described it as two cars going 100 (MPH) right at each other and it was who's going to flinch first."

We will find out who flinches first in roughly 24 hours from now.