It was only six weeks ago, but it’s hard for Paul Maurice to remember how he felt after his Florida Panthers fell to the brink of elimination in Round 1 against the Bruins. So much has changed since then for the Panthers, who have gone from the lowest seeded team in the postseason all the way to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final in one of the wildest months in NHL history.
Florida now has two days to think back to it, though. Like they were in the first round of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Panthers are down 3-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Final and will have to win three straight elimination games to achieve their long-shot championship dream.
“We’ll tell stories over the next two days, for sure,” coach Paul Maurice said Saturday, “reminders of the energy level we brought into Game 5 in Boston and we’ll celebrate it. We’ll celebrate it before the puck drops.”
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It’s all they can do now.
Their incredible run through the Stanley Cup playoffs could end as soon as Tuesday, as the Golden Knights have a chance to hoist their first Stanley Cup on their home ice in Las Vegas unless Florida can regroup and pull off a comeback unlike any the NHL has seen in more than 80 years.
NHL history says it’s nearly impossible. Only one team has ever rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win the Cup Final — the Maple Leafs, all the way back in the 1942 Stanley Cup Final.
Their own history says it can be done. The Bruins set regular-season records for wins and points, and Florida still stormed back to win three straight games, including Game 7 at TD Garden despite trailing in the final minute of regulation.
“Where we’ve been at our strongest,” Maurice said, “is in the most critical time.”
These lessons go back to the regular season, when the Panthers sat nine points out of a postseason spot after Christmas, and continued until April. Since it completed its improbable comeback in Boston, Florida has been mostly charmed, winning 8 of 9 in Rounds 2 and 3. Now the Panthers have come upon their first major test of adversity since the first round of the Cup playoffs, knowing they’re capable of pulling off a monumental comeback, but also needing to summon it from the deep recesses of their experiences.
When they rallied to beat the Bruins, their comeback started in Game 5 and Matthew Tkachuk finished it by holding up a puck in the locker room and telling his teammates to “remember this room” because they’d be coming back for Game 7. The superstar right wing knew how quickly momentum could shift in a best-of-7 series and the one win triggered a turnaround. Florida’s power play got on track — it finished the series on a 5-of-11 run in the series after an 0-for-9 start to the Cup playoffs — and the Panthers three games by four combined goals.
“It was just a really short-term mindset, like go up there and get the first goal in Boston,” Tkachuk said. “The longer games go against all these teams, the more the pressure starts to shift to them.”
Said All-Star center Aleksander Barkov: “You’ve got to win four. … They’re one win away, we’re three wins away, but all we can do is think about one game, bringing it back to Florida and that’s our goal. That’s what we want to do in Vegas, go there and try to win that game.”
The challenge will be stiffer if Tkachuk is unable to go at 100 percent. The All-Star winger played just four shifts in the third period of the Panthers’ 3-2 loss in Game 4 on Saturday, clearly still ailing after a hard hit from Golden Knights forward Keegan Kolesar in the first period of Game 3 on Thursday. Florida won’t have a clearer update on his status until Wednesday, when it holds a practice in Nevada.
At the same time, the Panthers feel there are positives to take out of the third period. The Panthers were down 3-0 to Vegas with less than 24 minutes to go before scoring twice to give themselves a shot at a comeback.
Star defenseman Brandon Montour’s goal in the third period was fluky, bouncing off Golden Knights defensemen Brayden McNab and Shea Theodore to get past Vegas goaltender Adin Hill. Barkov’s in the third, though, came from the type of passing play Florida struggled to make throughout Game 4, finishing off a one-timer off two good passes by Montour and forward Anton Lundell.
Those three—Lundell, Barkov and Montour—recorded all six of the Panthers’ points in Game 4.
“We had a good push back, and all we’ve got to do is take that for the next game and play like that for the whole game,” Barkov said. “We just raised the pace of the game. We wanted more, we wanted to score more. I think that might be it.”
In the end, 3-1 is probably the right score for this series at this point. Games 1 and 3 were toss-ups, and Florida split them with the Golden Knights. Vegas mostly controlled Games 2 and 4, and won them both.
While it doesn’t mean there’s no chance at a comeback, it does mean the Panthers need to actively flip this series, rather than just trust what they’ve been doing.
“We’re in a difficult situation,” Maurice admitted. “Ninety percent of this will be just mindset, how we react at the drop of the puck.”
Originally published