‘Comeback Cats’ give Panthers new life with late goal, OT win to even series vs. Capitals
The Florida Panthers were all but doomed. There were less three minutes separating them from a near-insurmountable series deficit and, with no goaltender in their net and an extra skater on the ice, they were one shot away from overtime or one away from an almost-certain Game 4 loss to the Washington Capitals.
A shot from Garnet Hathaway from his own zone went just wide of the open goal. It would have effectively crushed the Panthers both in the game and, maybe, this first-round series in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs. Instead, it left a path for Florida to win 3-2 in overtime at Capital One Arena in Washington
“It’s a game of inches,” Carter Verhaeghe said.
“It’s a game of inches,” fellow forward Sam Reinhart echoed just a few minutes later.
Suddenly, there was a new chance at life for the Panthers, who rewrote their franchise record book in the regular season and won the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time. Reinhart used it.
With 2:04 left in regulation, the 26-year-old Canadian scored from the slot, corralling a bouncing puck and flicking it past Ilya Samsonov to force overtime with his first ever postseason goal. With 15:03 left in the first sudden-death overtime period, Verhaeghe sniped a shot over the Capitals goaltender’s left shoulder to stun the crowd of 18,573.
They were inches away from the brink of disaster. Now they’re somehow back in control of this first-round series, tied 2-2 as they head back to Sunrise for Game 5 on Wednesday and they’re playing as well as they have at any point in these still-young Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Getting a win in overtime feels amazing,” star center Aleksander Barkov said. “I’m not going to lie.”
Florida fell behind 1-0 in the first 7:15, tied the game up at 1-1 less than seven minutes later and no one else scored again until the final 11 minutes of regulation. The top-seeded Panthers went 0 of 4 on the power play — including 0 of 3 in the span of just 8:30 in the first half of the second period — and needed a 32-16 advantage in shots on goal, but they finally seized back home-ice advantage by beating No. 8-seed Washington on the road.
Including the regular season when Florida tied an NHL record with 29 come-from-behind wins, it was the Panthers’ 30th successful comeback of the year and now they need to win 2 of 3 — with two of the games back in South Florida — to win a playoff series for the first time since they reached the 1996 Stanley Cup Final in their third season of existence.
A loss would’ve all but doomed the Panthers to another early exit — only 30 teams in NHL history have come back to win a seven-game series after losing three of the first four. A win has them favored to take the opening-round series once again — and guarantees they’ll have at least a Game 6 on the road Friday.
They’re also getting stronger as the series goes and might even have the lead if they weren’t 0 of 13 on the power play in the first four games. Even with a blowout loss in Game 3, Florida outshot the Capitals, 62-47, across two games in Washington and 89-57 in the last eight periods, dating back to Game 2 on Thursday at FLA Live Arena
“This was the best game we’ve played this series,” said Barkov, the team captain. “We found a way to play our game and we get rewarded.”
As the Panthers soared to the best record in the NHL in the regular season, they did it on the back of offensive excellence and a knack for comebacks.
Their goal-scoring prowess still hasn’t quite showed up — they’ve only scored more than two goals in regulation once so far in the Cup playoffs — but the so-called “Comeback Cats” finally showed up in the most important moment.
The game could hardly have started worse for Florida. The Panthers committed three penalties in the first 7:01 and the Capitals took advantage of the third, scoring 14 seconds into their second power play of the game — Florida’s first penalty led to a 4-on-4 — when Washington winger T.J. Oshie deflected a shot past goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky.
The Panthers’ first comeback needed less than seven minutes, as star defenseman Aaron Ekblad and Verhaeghe got a 2-on-1, and executed perfectly to get Verhaeghe a game-tying goal with 5:52 left in the first.
The next period was spent almost entirely with one team or the other on the power play. Defenseman Ben Chiarot went into the penalty box just 12 seconds into the period for a delay of game and Florida killed off the Capitals’ first chance. The Panthers then got three straight power plays and couldn’t score on any, then they committed back-to-back penalties to give the Capitals 43 seconds of a 5-on-3 advantage.
Again, the penalty kill triumphed and the game stayed 1-1 at the second intermission. It wasn’t quite a must-win situation for Florida, but it was close. Twenty minutes separated the Panthers from a near-insurmountable series deficit and the Capitals struck the first blow when All-Star center Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on a breakaway after a high hit by Oshie on forward Sam Bennett went uncalled.
For Florida to start a season-saving comeback in the series, it needed one in the final minutes of Game 4.
“It’s a game that can really go either way at the end of it,” Reinhart said. “We stuck with it.”
With more than three minutes left, interim coach Andrew Brunette yanked Bobrovsky out of the net to get an extra attacker on the ice. It was a gamble — Washington has twice put away games by launching long shots into empty nets — and the Panthers needed a break with Hathaway’s near miss.
Less than a minute later, Reinhart fired a game-tying goal by Samsonov, fell to one knee and punched at the air.
He had never played in the playoffs before Tuesday and Florida has admitted to being nervous in these first few games against the Stanley Cup-tested Capitals.
Finally, the Panthers were not shaken. Comebacks are what they do best and their most important one yet no longer seems so daunting.
This story was originally published May 9, 2022 at 10:12 PM.
