Panthers survive 3 blown leads, keep season alive with thrilling OT win in Boston
The Florida Panthers have spent most of 2023 feeling like they were playing must-win games, so Game 5 on Wednesday — their first true must-win game of the season — did not faze them, not even after they blew three leads and had to go to overtime with the Boston Bruins.
Matthew Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe — could it have ever been anyone else? — made the one play the Panthers needed. Florida beat the Bruins, 4-3, in overtime in Boston to keep its season alive and force a Game 6.
Now, the Panthers, who didn’t even clinch their postseason spot until April 11, will head back to Florida to host the Bruins on Friday at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, still down 3-2, but with a very real chance now to push the Presidents’ Trophy winners to seven games in the first round of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
“We’ve been so close to elimination from January on that we’re pretty good at taking a few punches if we have to,” coach Paul Maurice said. “We got off the mat.”
The Panthers have often lost pretty and won ugly this season, and so they knew all it would take in overtime, after getting outshot 43-22 in regulation, was one great play or a single bounce to go their way, and it finally happened with 13:55 left in the first sudden-death period.
Verhaeghe intercepted a careless pass by Linus Ullmark behind the Bruins’ goal, the All-Star goaltender desperately tried to dive back in front of the net and Tkachuk finished off a pass from Verhaeghe on an open net to keep the Panthers’ season alive for at least another two days.
Boston outshot Florida, 47-25, and went 2 of 5 on the power play. None of it mattered. Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky was spectacular, Verhaeghe handed out three assists and the Panthers never trailed on the way to their biggest win of the 2022-23 NHL season.
Bobrovsky, who finally took the net back from fellow goaltender Alex Lyon in the third period of Game 3 on Friday, stopped 44 of the 47 shots he faced in just his second start since March and denied Bruins left wing Patrice Bergeron on a breakaway before the third-period buzzer just to get the game to overtime at 3-3. In the extra period, Florida finally hung with Boston for six evenly played, back-and-forth minutes before Tkachuk scored off Verhaeghe’s third assist.
Verhaeghe now has 20 points in 21 career postseason games for the Panthers — already the third most in franchise history — and Tkachuk, who also had an assist, has seven in five games.
To win the game, the superstar right wing moved the puck to his backhand and flipped it by Ullmark, then sprinted out to center ice, leaped into the air three times and pumped his right fists while his teammates — with All-Star center Aleksander Barkov leading the way, grinning from ear to ear — mobbed him and he leaped into Bobrovsky’s arms.
The crowd of 17,850 at TD Garden was stunned after a rare gaffe by Boston’s Vezina Trophy-contending goalie.
“We knew someone was going to be the hero,” center Sam Bennett said, “and Chucky was again for us.”
In all, Ullmark gave up four goals on just 25 shots and Florida only had six in the third period as it blew a pair of one-goal leads.
The Panthers set the tone, though, with their strongest start yet and their first opening-period goal of the series gave them a 1-0 lead the first intermission. While shots were close to even, Florida had a 10-5 edge in scoring chances and outhit the Bruins, 22-12. Boston made the one costly mistake when Bruins winger Tyler Bertuzzi threw a puck in front of his net for a giveaway and the Panthers made Boston pay, as Verhaeghe set up right wing Anthony Duclair to open the scoring with 11:34 left in the first.
Until overtime, the Bruins answered every one of Florida’s goals. They tied it at 1-1 in the first three minutes of the second period, then at 2-2 in the first five minutes of the third and 3-3 less than five minutes after the Panthers scored another go-ahead goal.
Verhaeghe was also the catalyst of the second goal, with his relentless pressure in the offensive zone keeping a long possession alive and ultimately leading to a snipe from Bennett to give Florida a 2-1 lead in the second period. A year ago, Verhaeghe scored a series-winning goal to send the Panthers to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 1996, and he rose to the occasion again in Round 1 this year.
In the third period, Florida and Boston kept trading goals — at one point, they scored power-play goals 41 seconds apart — until it was even after 60 minutes.
The Panthers were confident as they traveled up to Massachusetts, convinced the margin between these two teams was not as wide as the series score and 43-point gap in the regular-season standings might suggest. For the second time in this series, a road win supported their belief and now they’re just two wins away from pulling off one of the biggest upsets in NHL history.
“Things happen fast in the playoffs,” Tkachuk said, “and now they’ve got to come down to Florida for another one.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2023 at 10:25 PM.
