‘Confidence is earned’: 3 reasons Panthers have gone from No. 8 seed to brink of East finals
When the puck drops for Game 4 of the Florida Panthers’ second-round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday, it will have been less than two weeks since their season sat on the brink of elimination.
Exactly two weeks earlier, the Panthers were down to their final loss after dropping three of four to the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins start Round 1. On this day, one of the great comebacks in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs began.
Florida won Game 5 in Boston and then Game 6 in Sunrise. “Confidence is earned,” Paul Maurice said after his Panthers forced Game 7 last month. With back-to-back wins, they deserved it.
“There’s no sense walking around confident,” the coach said, “if you have no reason to be confident.”
Florida hasn’t lost since. The Panthers won Game 7 to pull off one of the biggest upsets in NHL history, then charged out to a 3-0 series lead on the Maple Leafs. They have won six in a row for only the second time all season and can now finish off a sweep when they host Toronto on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at FLA Live Arena.
It’s a stunning turnaround and not just because of what Florida fought back from in the first round. The Panthers were nine points out of a postseason spot after Christmas and didn’t clinch a spot in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs until the last week of the regular season. Their upset of the Bruins was the largest ever, in terms of point differential, in a best-of-7 series.
At the same time, none of this has ever fazed Florida. The Panthers have been confident since the very start of the Cup playoffs for three big reasons.
1. ‘There’s no pressure on us’
Matthew Tkachuk didn’t wait a moment to start painting a narrative. On the final day of Florida’s regular season, the superstar right wing immediately went to hyping up the Panthers’ first-round opponent.
Boston, he said in April, was “the best team in regular-season history.” Florida, he said, was up against the “hockey world” because pretty much no one was picking the Panthers to win.
He did the same thing last week before Florida kicked off Round 2 in Toronto. The Maple Leafs, he said, are “the second-best team in the league.”
“It’s just about having fun,” Tkachuk said. “Why play if you can’t enjoy it? I don’t think there’s a ton of pressure. There’s no pressure on us.”
It’s a major shift from last year, when the Panthers won the Presidents’ Trophy and then got swept by the Lightning in Round 2, and this team is clearly responding better to lowered expectations.
“We’re not too scared to lose,” defenseman Gustav Forsling said.
It clearly helps in close, late-game situations. On this six-game winning streak, four of the victories have come via comeback and three in overtime, and Game 7 in Boston was both.
There was only one moment in Round 1, Tkachuk said, when he believed Florida was going to come up short — with about two minutes left and the Panthers down by a goal, and then star defenseman Brandon Montour scored in the last minute and everyone expected they were going to win.
“The pressure’s been on the opposing team,” right wing Anthony Duclair said. “Everyone’s saying we’re the eight seed, so there’s no pressure on us.”
2. They’ve found an identity.
None of this would matter if Florida wasn’t also really good. The Panthers have been for the last two weeks, but also the last few months.
Florida had a losing record as recently as the last week of March and then promptly put together its first six-game winning streak of the season — until then, the Panthers’ longest winning streak of the year was three games — to surge into the playoffs.
Still, Florida was tied for the fifth-best record in the Eastern Conference after the 2023 NHL All-Star Game and has grown into its first-year coach’s system as the season has progressed. It has just peaked in the playoffs, with an aggressive forecheck goading their opponents into 12.4 giveaways per game — the Islanders, for comparison, have the most giveaways per game in the playoffs with 84 in six before getting eliminated.
“To become confident, you have to earn it,” Maurice said. “There’s some learning that has to go with that.”
3. The stars are starring
In Toronto, fans are baffled by the disappearance of stars Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly, who haven’t combined for a single goal in this series.
The Panthers have gotten contributions from all across the lineup, but, almost as importantly, their stars have played up to expectations.
Tkachuk has four points. All-Star center Aleksander Barkov has a goal and two assists. Star defenseman Aaron Ekblad has three assists, including one on the overtime winner in Game 3. Even Montour, who only has one point, leads the team with 12 shots.
They have all, however, been overshadowed by star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has been the best player on the ice in each of the first three games with a .938 save percentage and 1.97 goals against average.
“What I like,” Maurice said, “is that I can truly sit up here and give you a whole bunch of different names.”
