‘They put a lot of pressure on themselves,’ but Panthers finally get playoff validation
Those too-frequent conversations about the nerves the Florida Panthers battled throughout the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs make more sense once it became obvious how Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Co. feel about winning.
There was a postgame celebration in the locker room, yes — albeit a very brief one, Barkov said. There was mostly just relief.
“It’s just off your shoulder a little bit,” said Huberdeau, 28.
“I’m not going to live,” added Barkov, 26. “It feels amazing.”
Neither are too old to feel like they were running out of time to ever make their mark in the Stanley Cup playoffs. They did, Barkov said, start to feel, “like, What’s happening right now?” What might another first-round exit have meant for Barkov, Huberdeau, star defensemen Aaron Ekblad and MacKenzie Weegar, and anyone else who had been around for close to a decade of early endings, especially with Huberdeau set to be a free agent after next season?
It’s something they no longer have to ponder. Their biggest obstacle is cleared and their biggest question answered. It’s validation, even as they set their sights on bigger, more meaningful goals.
“Now we might as well go all the way,” Huberdeau said.
Validation does mean something, though. It means the confidence to keep teams together and maybe an easing of pressure, whether it’s on those who felt the weight of 26 years of failure or on a highly paid player worried he’s not living up to his contract.
On Friday, there was validation for the stars and for highly paid goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, for interim coach Andrew Brunette and the way he has thrived in his unusual circumstances, and for general manager Bill Zito, who traded away basically every future first-round pick he could to chase a Stanley Cup this year.
“You don’t think about it, but it’s there,” Barkov said of the burden he faced. “It’s not there anymore.”
It was obvious in the smile broke out when he scored a go-ahead goal with less than six minutes left in the third period. If the Panthers could just hold on for the final 5:43, Barkov would get to be the hero because he fired a potential series-winning goal into the back of the net — off a feed from versatile All-Star forward Claude Giroux — to give Florida its first lead of the game. He celebrated by raising his hands above his head and smiling like he’d never smiled a rink before — mouth wide open, almost on the verge of laughter.
He was also on the ice when Giroux tied the game about six minutes earlier and on the ice again when forward Carter Verhaeghe scored with 2:46 left in the first overtime period to beat the Washington Capitals, 4-3, and clinch the first-round series at Capital One Arena in Washington.
In the series, Barkov led the Panthers with 22 shots on goal and was tied for the best plus-minus among forwards, scoring two goals and adding four assists. Huberdeau, meanwhile, tallied three points and was one of Florida’s best two-way forwards in the series, potentially saving a goal in Game 3. On the defensive end, Ekblad’s five points were fourth most on the team and he played the entire series after missing the final six weeks of the regular season with a knee injury, while Weegar overcame a turnover-plagued start to the Cup playoffs to finish the series as one of the Panthers’ two most productive possession-controlling defenseman.
“They put a lot of pressure on themselves — probably too much,” Brunette said. “They were able to find a way to pull through.”
Brunette faced his own questions at the start of the playoffs, just because of his title and the strange circumstances leading to it. He had been out of coaching for three years when Joel Quenneville approached him to join his coaching staff in South Florida and Brunette decided to give it one more shot. The 48-year-old Canadian coached the forwards and ran the power play for more than two seasons and then replaced Quenneville in the first month of the season when the former coach had to resign amid revelations about his mishandling of a 2010 sexual-assault allegation while he was coaching the Chicago Blackhawks.
When Zito elevated Brunette into the interim role, no one was sure how long it would last. Even after Brunette coached in the 2022 NHL All-Star Game and guided the Panthers to their first Presidents’ Trophy, Zito never removed the interim tag. If Florida flamed out in the first round again, it would be easy to move on from Brunette — maybe chalk up his incredible record to the talent on the roster and the systems Quenneville put in place.
In Round 1, Brunette took gambles, though, and they paid off. After the Panthers lost two of the first three games, Brunette reshuffled his lineups — splitting up Ekblad and Weegar — and Florida won three in a row. In Game 6, he benched winger Anthony Duclair — a 30-goal scorer — in favor of Ryan Lomberg and the left wing, playing for the first time since Game 1, scored a game-tying goal in the second period.
“He brought what we were hoping he’d bring,” Brunette said. “He took advantage of his opportunity.”
On the decisive goal, Zito’s touch was evident. The scorer was Verhaeghe — whom the GM signed to a two-year, $2 million deal in his first offseason in 2020 — and the assists came from Giroux and defenseman Ben Chiarot, both of whom were midseason additions and cost Florida first-round picks.
Verhaeghe set a single-season franchise record with 12 points and Giroux was second on the team with seven points. Nine of the 12 Panthers to score multiple points in the series were acquired by Zito in his less-than-two years as GM.
No one, however, has faced more scrutiny than Bobrovsky and he has been the fourth best goalie of the playoffs so far, according to MoneyPuck.com’s goals saved above expected.
It was a long way from last year, when Bobrovsky gave up 10 goals on 63 shots and got benched after three games in the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. It meant he went into this season without even a guarantee he’d be the starter — backup goaltender Spencer Knight, 21, began the year with Calder Memorial Trophy aspirations — and the seven-year, $70 million deal former general manager Dale Tallon signed him to looking worse than ever.
A year later, he’s a reason Florida can win it all and a run like this was exactly why the Panthers wanted him.
“He’s really dialed in,” Brunette said. “This is the best I’ve probably seen him.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2022 at 1:20 PM.
