First-round playoff preview: Alex Lyon starts, and Panthers embrace challenge in Boston
The Florida Panthers kept their first-round goaltending plan to themselves for as long about as they could, but coach Paul Maurice’s ultimate decision was no surprise: Alex Lyon is the Panthers’ starting goaltender, at least to start the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
The 30-year-old goaltender will make his postseason debut — and ninth start in a row — when Florida opens the Stanley Cup playoffs Monday against the Boston Bruins at TD Garden. His performance down the stretch, filling in when Sergei Bobrovsky was out with an illness, earned him the chance to lead the Panthers on to the ice to start the Cup playoffs.
“He’s really good. He’s played really well for us. That’s it, not overthinking a whole lot,” Maurice said. “I’ve got two good goalies. I’m comfortable with either of them, but Lyon deserves the start.”
Lyon, who was undrafted out of Yale, had only played 31 games across six NHL seasons before getting the nod for Florida at the most crucial times of its season last month. The Panthers were coming off a four-game losing streak and had to turn to Lyon when Bobrovsky was sick, and as fellow goaltender Spencer Knight remains away from the team in the NHL’s player assistance program, and the third-string goalie ripped off six straight wins to get Florida back into a playoff spot.
Lyon started the final eight games of the regular season, winning six with an overtime loss, and posted a .943 save percentage and 1.87 goals against average. He finished the regular season, his first in the Panthers’ organization, with a .912 save percentage and 2.89 goals against average, and actually beat the Bruins in overtime back in January.
It was the final meeting of the regular season between Boston and Florida, which was the only team to beat the Bruins twice this year without a shootout win.
In some ways, Lyon’s inexperience might make him well suited to take on the Presidents’ Trophy winners in Round 1.
“I never thought I would be in this situation this year. I never thought I would be in this situation 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Lyon said Saturday, “so, for me, the ability to just see all of this as icing on the cake I think is very powerful and I just try to lean into that.”
In other ways, Lyon has more experience than anyone else Florida could turn to.
Last year with the Hurricanes organization, Lyon led AHL Chicago to the Calder Cup and notched a shutout in the championship-clinching game.
The Panthers viewed him as one of the top third goalies on the market and signed him to a one-year, two-way deal on the first day of free agency last year. He got his first shot in the NHL back in January when both Bobrovsky and Knight were dealing with ailments, and then returned to South Florida for good in February when Knight left the team for personal reasons and entered the player assistance program. He started once in March to give Bobrovsky a breather on the second night of a back-to-back set and struggled, but has been unflappable since taking over when the star goaltender missed four games with an illness.
Lyon earned his shot to start and the Panthers have fully embraced him.
“He won a Calder Cup last year in the AHL. ... That’s no easy feat,” star defenseman Aaron Ekblad said Saturday. “He’s been there, he’s done that and we’re excited to work for him.”
Panthers embrace challenge in Boston
Florida is the biggest underdog in the first-round of the playoffs, according to MGM Resorts International. Those odds, though, are more about the opponent than the Panthers.
Going back to the start of March, Florida closed out the regular season with the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference and led the East with 3.8 goals per game. The Panthers mostly wound up as the second and final wild card — effectively, the No. 8 seed — because they were nine points out of a postseason spot during the final week of 2022 after losing 13 of 19 going into Christmas.
A new coach and a rash of injuries doomed Florida to a slow start. Even so, the Panthers led the NHL in shots per game and ranked fourth in expected goals, so they actually have the sixth-best chance to win the Stanley Cup, according to MoneyPuck.com. There were positive signs all year and they finally started to yield positive results in the second half of the regular season.
“This is the time of year you want to be playing your best hockey,” forward Sam Reinhart said Sunday.
Still, Florida is fully embracing an underdog mentality. Matthew Tkachuk has been hyping up Boston at every opportunity — “We’re up against probably the best hockey team of all time in the regular season,” the superstar right wing said Sunday — and the Panthers know from their experience last year how tight things can get for the Presidents’ Trophy winners when they fall behind in a series.
This is the type of moment got Tkachuk for, too. The series starts on Patriots’ Day — a major holiday in Massachusetts — and Florida knows the already-raucous Bruins crowds will be at another level in these playoffs given the historic regular season Boston just put together, setting the single-season record for wins.
“TD Garden’s going to be buzzing. It’s not going to be buzzing for us,” Ekblad said, “but you feed off that energy and that buzz in the building no matter where you are.”
Sam Bennett travels with Panthers
Although there was no chance he was going to suit up for Game 1, center Sam Bennett still traveled with the Panthers for the first two games of the first round and took an important step Sunday in his return from a soft-tissue injury, which has now kept him out for 13 straight games.
The center skated by himself while teammates practiced at the Florida Panthers IceDen and joined Florida for its morning skate Monday at the Garden.
The next step for Bennett is to participate in a practice, and then the Panthers can put him back in their lineup. The 26-year-old Canadian had 16 goals and 24 assists in 63 games in the regular season, almost exclusively centering Florida’s second line and playing next to Tkachuk.
All-Star center Aleksander Barkov was the only other player missing from practice Sunday in Coral Springs, but it was only in anticipation of the heavy workload he’s going to face in the coming weeks.
Quipped Maurice: “I was just going to play him 47 minutes tomorrow.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2023 at 12:25 PM.
