A near collapse, a clutch power play and an ‘emotional’ win for the Panthers in Colorado
The Florida Panthers’ message was simple when they took the ice for one final power play in the dying minutes of a 5-4 win Tuesday in Denver.
“Score,” star defenseman Brandon Montour said was the gist of the conversation, but there was another component, too.
“You want to just grab momentum,” he added Tuesday.
It had all been sucked away from the Panthers. A 4-1 lead was long gone after three straight goals from the Colorado Avalanche — including two in 20 seconds — wiped away all the fruits of two excellent periods for Florida. The Panthers were on the verge of a nightmarish collapse at Ball Arena and a power play with 5:20 remaining was their best chance to pull out of a tailspin.
Star center Aleksander Barkov won the opening faceoff and Florida possessed the puck for the entire first minute of the power play, with four shot attempts and one prime chance from Sam Reinhart in the slot. The forward’s shot prompted a stoppage and then the Panthers went right back to work. Barkov won another faceoff and Florida cycled the puck again, eventually working its possession inside to Matthew Tkachuk, who refused to let the Panthers lose.
The All-Star right wing knocked the puck into Avalanche goaltender Alexandar Georgiev and started whacking at it. On the fourth try, he wound up hitting it into the net — with an assist from star defenseman Cale Makar, who accidentally redirected the puck past Georgiev for an own goal. No one cared how it happened, though: Florida improbably was back on top and Tkachuk, after his second goal of the game, was literally jumping for joy behind Colorado’s net.
“That was a huge win for us,” forward Sam Bennett said Tuesday, “an emotional game.”
It was simultaneously one of the most encouraging performances of the 2022-23 NHL season for the Panthers and one of the most infuriating. The win, which elevated Florida’s record back to .500 and kept the Panthers (19-19-4) within six points of a postseason spot, was mostly the product of two spectacular periods, which pushed Florida out to a 3-0 lead in the first 14 minutes and a 4-1 lead at the second intermission. The third period, though, was an outright debacle — without a shot for nearly 12 minutes — until the Panthers pulled off one excellent power play to knock off the defending-champion Avalanche in Colorado.
In the third period, the Avalanche outshot Florida, 12-4, in 5-on-5 action, but the Panthers outshot Colorado overall 37-31 with a 16-10 edge in high-danger chances, even as they played with a lead for nearly the entire game.
Florida, badly in need of a second-half turnaround just to qualify for the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, started the second half of its season with about as good a period as it has played all year. Barkov scored with 10:53 left in the first and then Montour added another with 7:08 remaining, and Bennett put Florida up 3-0 with one more at the 6:13 mark.
Barkov’s goal came at the very start of his fifth shift with new linemates Anton Lundell and Reinhart. Coach Paul Maurice decided to put the trio together Monday, hoping to snap all three out of their weeks-long funks, and his decision paid off almost immediately when Lundell beat out two Avalanche skaters to win a loose puck Colorado’s net and fed Barkov, who was charging off the bench and toward the net, for the first goal of the game.
“That was as good a game as I’ve seen Lundell play all year and I thought Barkov looked energized,” Maurice said Tuesday. “There might be something there.”
A few minutes later, Montour scored on a rifle shot from the right faceoff circle and Bennett then pushed the lead to three goals on a power play. Although they spent the first half of the opening period pinned back in their own zone, the Panthers got out of the first period up 3-1 and kept building into the second.
At the end of the end of the first period, the Avalanche had a 13-11 advantage in shots, a 10-6 advantage in scoring chances and a 5-3 advantage in high-danger chances. By the end of the second, Florida was up 28-17 in shots and 9-6 in high-danger chances, and down only 21-19 in total scoring chances.
“We built really well through two,” Maurice said .
In the third period, all the Panthers’ building went to waste. Colorado had the first 10 shots of the final period, beat Sergei Bobrovsky twice in 20 seconds — both on shots the star goaltender probably should have saved — and finally tied the game 4-4 with 7:53 left, just a few minutes after an apparent game-tying goal was overturned for offsides.
It all put Florida in a dire spot, with the Avalanche owning an 11-1 edge in shots in the final period at the time it tied the game.
The Panthers, however, rose to face their toughest test of the year in a way they haven’t all season. Florida owned the following stretch of the game, playing the next few minutes entirely in Colorado’s zone before forward Nick Cousins finally drew a penalty. The power-play chance turned positive momentum into a real opportunity, and Florida generated seven scoring chances and six high-danger chances on the power play to retake the lead.
One win can’t save a season, no matter how good or thrilling. One loss probably wouldn’t have entirely doomed the Panthers, either.
Still, Florida now does have a chance to take 3 of 4 on this road trip when it faces the Vegas Golden Knights at 10 p.m. on Thursday at T-Mobile Arena and there’s now a tangible result to go along with its belief it can play better in the second half of the season. As they go to face the Golden Knights (27-13-2) in Las Vegas, the Panthers have momentarily started to point back in the right direction.
“We managed to find a way to get the win,” Bennett said, “and that’s all that matters.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2023 at 7:32 AM.
