RALEIGH N.C. — They came off slowly the bench late Wednesday night, even quietly, easing toward toward goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with nods and half-smiles that spoke of their good night’s work.
But there were no hugs, no shouts, certainly no celebratory sticks thrown in the air like when they started all this winning two spring ago. So, their good night’s work might have been a February or March game and not a clinching 5-3 win in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final that sends them playing into anothr June.
“A step,” goalie Sergei Bobrovsky said. “But only a step. There’s a bigger step waiting.”
The Stanley Cup Final starts next week. It starts on the road for the Florida Panthers, and it looks like it will be a repeat affair with the Edmonton Oilers when it does start. But the details of who and when don’t matter just yet for a Panthers team that’s on one of the special runs in South Florida sports history.
That these Panthers will be playing wherever it starts, ready and rested, is story enough for right now. They punched their ticket to the final for the third consecutive year by beating the Carolina Hurricanes in the postseason for the second time in thee years.
Yes, it’s getting repetitive in the richest of ways, as the Panthers try now to repeat as champions — a feat that’s only happened twice in South Florida sports.
These kind of teams rarely come along, these forever of kind teams, the ones where big moments are created by the biggest stars. Aleksander Barkov had the puck in phone-booth space in a tie game, beating one Carolina defender, juking another in tight space by the goal and passing across the goalie for Carter Verhaeghe to score the winning goal.
“I haven’t seen it,
They closed this one on the road, just as they have all three series this season. Tampa Bay. Toronto. Now Carolina. Playing in the other arena doesn’t bother them. Maybe it even energizes a team with so many Panthers happy to be the villain.
They’re 8-3 on the road now this postseason. They’re 28-11 over the past three playoffs.
So, yeah, they’ll start the Stanley Cup Final on the road. Does it matter?
What matters they keep showing they’ll beat you however a night needs to be played. Skate up and down the ice like Tampa Bay and Toronto did at times? They’ll do that. Play in the muck like Carolina liked? That’s their game, too.
And if you want to get nasty as every playoff does at some point, the Panthers are more than comfortable going down into the gutter. They’ll play there, if you want. Just this series, Brad Marchand, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett picked fights with Carolina players who stepped over the line.
Dominated? Well, four games to one says enough.
Intimidated? Maybe Carolina was for a stretch they were, too. These Panthers can do that. The signature of the series was how Tkachuk went after Sebastian Aho for the manner the Carolina center injured Tkachuk’s teammate, Sam Reinhart. And no Carolina player came to Aho’s defense. They just watched Aho go into turtle mode on the ice.
Aho came to life as this series went on, as scorers can do. He opened Wednesday by turning two Panthers turnovers into two, first-period goals. Everything was going Carolina’s way right down to their winning nine of the opening 11 face-offs.
But one play, just one shift, can change a night. When Carolina’s Jesperi Kotkaniemi took a holding penalty midway through the second period, it didn’t seem like the night changed. The Panthers hadn’t scored on their previous 10 power plays. They had trouble just winning faces-offs this night, right?
Barkov won a face-off, then kept the puck in the offensive zone so Ekblad threw up a shot that Tkachuk tipped it. That made it, 2-1, and changed the night.
Thirty seconds later Sam Bennett fed a speeding Evan Rodrigues to tip in the net.
The Panthers then made it three goals on three consecutive shots when Anton Lundell won the face-off, muscled to the middle and tipped in a pass from Marchand.
Carolina wasn’t done. Seth Jarvis tied it up midway through the third period. But Barkov worked his magic, and Verhaeghe worked his for the win. Even then there was some drama, as Bennett took a penalty that was killed off — and Bennett came out of the box to score an empty-net goal.
Now the question becomes the tired one in sports: Rust or rest? The Panthers need some rest. Every team does this time of year — all surviving two of them. The Panthers got Reinhart, Niko Mikkola and A.J. Greer back for this game but Eetu Luostarinen and Greer left with injury.
Edmonton, if it is Edmonton in the final, is up 3-1 against Dallas. One more win and it the final starts in rural Alberta next week. But if so it would mean Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl again. It would mean brutally long trips again. It would mean the Panthers run through a familiar foes all the way — Tampa Bay, Toronto, Carolina and now Edmonton all over again.
The Miami Dolphins made three consecutive Super Bowls from 1971-1973, winning the latter two. The Miami Heat made four NBA Finals in a row from 2010 to 2014, winning the middle two.
So, the Panthers are on one of the special runs in South Florida history making this third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. What’s coming next will help say how special.
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