‘Everybody just f—king breathe’: No panic from Panthers after close Game 1 loss in Final
Paul Maurice was having trouble with his chair.
In the grand scheme of everything he went through Friday, it was sort of the least of his worries. Only a few minutes earlier, his Florida Panthers had lost Game 1 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final to the Vegas Golden Knights and the coach was getting ready to explain what he saw — if he could ever sit down. The 56-year-old Canadian tried to yank it out from beneath the table and it got caught, shaking the podium where he sat for his postgame press conference. Finally, he slid it out and smiled.
“I got it,” the first-year coach said Saturday. “We’re good.”
In the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, the postgame press conference has been Maurice’s canvas — he was similarly sarcastic and amiable after the Panthers’ most recent loss, way back in Game 4 of Round 2 to the Maple Leafs — and he was in rare form after the first game of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, even after Florida lost 5-2 to fall into a 1-0 series hole.
A costly third-period giveaway by superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk he said was “closer to the root canal” than, say, lumpy oatmeal on a scale of disappointments. He dropped the F-word multiple times, always in a lighthearted manner. He gave about the simplest explanation possible of when he thought the game turned.
“The 3-2 goal made it tough,” he said, dryly. “We only had two goals and they had three.”
To sum things up: Maurice is not worried, even after the Panthers lost Game 1 for the first time since Round 1.
“We lost the first game in the Boston series, got a little better then lost two more and got a little better,” he said. “Everybody just [expletive] breathe.”
There are a few good reasons for this.
The first is Florida will still have one more chance to steal home-ice advantage from the Golden Knights on Monday when it plays Game 2 at 8 p.m. at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Another is how close the game was — tied at 2-2 with less than 14 minutes to go before the Golden Knights scored three times, including an empty-net goal, in the final 13:01.
“I would describe this as a 2-2 game going into the third,” Maurice said. “That’s how I would describe it.”
The margins across the board were minuscule. Shots were even. The Panthers had two more shot attempts than Vegas and the Golden Knights had six more scoring chances than Florida. The only big margin was in high-danger chances, with the Golden Knights more than doubling up the Panthers at 21-10.
Florida did enough to win Game 1, Vegas just did more, creating better chances to score and finishing on them.
“I didn’t really love our game all night,” left wing Carter Verhaeghe said Saturday, “but 2-2 going to the third we can find a way to win.”
Instead, the Golden Knights scored the game-winning goal on a counterattack, got an insurance goal off a turnover by Tkachuk and hit the empty net to seal the win with 1:45 to go.
All throughout these Stanley Cup playoffs, the Panthers have played with a thin margin for error — this was the first game in Florida’s last 13 to be decided to by more than two goals and it took an empty-net goal to make it three — and won because of their stars’ play.
In the opening game of the Cup Final, Vegas goaltender Adin Hill outdueled star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky with a 34-29 advantage in saves, and the Golden Knights’ star forward tandem of Jack Eichel and Chandler Stephenson accounted for three points.
The Panthers didn’t get a single point from stars Aleksander Barkov, Brandon Montour, Aaron Ekblad and Tkachuk, and only scored one even-strength goal and it was on a set play off a face-off with 10.2 seconds left in the second period. Their other goal came on the penalty kill, with Anton Lundell setting up fellow center Eric Staal. Florida didn’t generate enough quality offense in the run of play or on the power play, even though Vegas entered the Final with one of the worst penalty kills in the Cup playoffs.
The Panthers went 0 for 3 on the penalty kill. The Golden Knights went 2 for 7, with the second coming against an empty net. It was another small difference big enough to matter in a close game.
“I have faith in the group to learn,” Maurice said. “This was such an extreme set of style against Carolina’s full-out, four-man hard push to having some time on the outside, so we probably overspent.”
Florida certainly has the capacity to regroup, but the challenge can stiffen quickly.
The Panthers, who are the lowest seeded team in the playoffs, have stolen home-ice advantage away in the first two games of every series, always quickly shifting the pressure onto their higher-seeded opponent.
Another loss wouldn’t cripple them, though. A win wouldn’t mean they’re on their way to another easy win, either.
The main takeaway from Game 1 for Florida is this is going to be close.
“It’s the first game. It’s a long series,” Bobrovsky said. “Lots of hockey ahead of us. We play, we learn and we move on.”
This story was originally published June 4, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
