After 9 hours of hockey and 2 clutch Tkachuk goals, Panthers take control of East finals
It was something like deja vu in the tunnels beneath PNC Arena, where only about 45 earlier the Florida Panthers had been delirious as they celebrated beating the Carolina Hurricanes at the end of the sixth longest game in NHL history. Now, they were doing it all again.
Matthew Tkachuk, the hero, was getting whisked from one network interview to another to try to explain what just happened. Aleksander Barkov, the captain, was holding court to try to put into perspective another historic win. The Panthers, the ultimate underdog of the NHL Conference Finals, were victorious once again in overtime, the magic still alive on their incredible run through the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
This time, it all got done much sooner. Tkachuk, who scored the game-winning goal with 12.7 seconds left in a fourth overtime in Game 1, finished off a pretty power-play passing play just 1:51 into overtime Saturday and Florida beat the Hurricanes, 2-1. Like he did a day earlier, Tkachuk celebrated by pointing right to the tunnel and racing off the ice, eager to take the Panthers’ 2-0 series lead back to Sunrise.
After Game 1, they didn’t get out of the arena until close to 3 a.m. After Game 2, they were out of there by midnight, ready to hop on a plane to get out of North Carolina on Sunday and back to South Florida for Game 3 on Monday.
“It’s been a lot of hockey the last two games, three or four days,” Tkachuk said Saturday, understandably having lost track of just how long he’d been on the road. “I’m sure that it’s going to be something that I haven’t seen yet on Monday. I can’t wait to see the atmosphere. I can’t wait to play in it.”
If all goes according to plan, the Panthers won’t have to go back to Raleigh. They’re two wins away from reaching the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1996 — just their third season of existence — and could clinch as soon as Wednesday if they win the next two at FLA Live Arena.
Right now, they’re basically unbeatable. Since losing 3 of 4 to start Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Florida has won 9 of 10, with six overtime victories and six come-from-behind wins. All but two of the games have been decided by one goal and those two were decided by two.
It means two things: The Panthers are as resilient as they claim to be and about as clutch as possible, and they’re playing on a razor’s edge.
Their two wins to start the Eastern Conference finals already rank among the most thrilling in franchise history. Both required comebacks for Florida to get to overtime, featured at least 37 saves by star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and ended when Tkachuk scored in overtime, and either could’ve gone the other way.
“Our guy made a bunch of saves, their guy made a bunch of saves. They missed some, we missed some,” coach Paul Maurice said Saturday. “It is that tight, but we’ve been doing that now ... for a couple months.”
The Panthers have never did anything quite like this, though. They never even won 8 of 10 at any point in the regular season, let alone nine, and only had 14 comeback wins all year before the Cup playoffs began and 10 of those happened after January. They were the last team into the playoffs, beat the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins three straight times while facing elimination last month and have been unstoppable ever since.
The key cog to the whole experience has been Bobrovsky, who set a franchise record with 63 saves in Game 1 and followed it up with 37 in Game 2. The 34-year-old Russian is the highest paid goalie in the league and playing like it. He has saved 11.07 goals above expected in the postseason, according to NaturalStatTrick.com, and no other goaltender has saved even six.
An unsung hero all along, even though he’s an All-Star , is Barkov, only his play isn’t possibly unsung anymore. In Round 2, the 27-year-old Finn was a defensive force and the biggest reason Florida shut down the high-powered Maple Leafs. In Round 3, he already has two goals and his gorgeous second-period tally in Game 2 — using a fake through-the-legs move to befuddle Hurricanes goaltender Antti Raanta — drew high praise from Hockey Hall of Fame center Wayne Gretzky, who called it “one of the greatest moves I’ve seen in the Stanley Cup playoffs” during the NHL on TNT broadcast.
The ultimate hero, however, always seems to be Tkachuk. The superstar right wing assisted on the game-winning overtime goal in Game 7 of the first round, and now has three game-winning overtime goals of his own in these playoffs after scoring two less than 46 hours apart. His 18 points are already the most in a single playoff run in team history and he’s already tied for fourth on the Panthers’ all-time list. General manager Bill Zito’s offseason trade to bring the 25-year-old American to Florida — in exchange for star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau, star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar and a future first-round pick — has paid off even better than the Panthers could have possibly hoped.
“He’s been huge for us, not just scoring goals, not just making plays — everything about being a hockey player in the team, being a leader in the team,” Barkov said Saturday. “He’s been doing everything as well as possible.”
Added defenseman Radko Gudas: “He’s doing all the right things that we need him to do and he’s leading by example.”
Barkov, who has been with the organization since he was 17, is the foundation. Bobrovsky, who signed his massive deal in 2019, raises the ceiling. Tkachuk, who has still been in Florida for less than 10 months, was the missing piece.
Together, they have the Panthers two wins away from the Cup Finals after two long nights in Carolina and two unforgettable victories.
Said Maurice: “We’re pretty excited and pretty happy with being up two, and getting out of here.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
