With Tkachuk ailing and Panthers down 3-1, Barkov tries to keep Florida’s season alive
Inside a quiet locker room at the end of another heart-breaking loss, Aleksander Barkov stayed matter of fact, as always.
There was no rah-rah rallying cry from the 27-year-old captain, nor were there any bold guarantees about what the future would hold for the Florida Panthers, down to their last life in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final. He was quiet — he usually is, both with and in the subtle ways his play guides the Panthers — and stuck to the fundamentals of the situation.
“You’ve got to win four, so it’s 3-1,” the All-Star center said Saturday after Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. “They’re one win away, we’re three wins away, but all we can do is think about one game, bringing it back to Florida.”
Superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk, if he plays, will not be 100 percent for Game 5 at 8 p.m. on Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Forward Eetu Luostarinen, a valuable role player, appears likely to miss his fifth straight game. The pathway for the Panthers to come back from down 3-1 in the series is narrow and more challenging because of a sudden spate of injuries — most notably to Tkachuk, whose 24 points are tied for the most in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
There, however, was a time — not long ago — when this was all Barkov’s. He was the No. 2 pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, the player who rewrote Florida’s record book and elevated the franchise to previously unforeseen heights. He was the captain for record-setting regular seasons and rare postseason successes, and the one who even made Tkachuk’s arrival possible last year. The Panthers would not be a fixture in the Stanley Cup playoffs were it not for Barkov and surely Tkachuk would not have forced his way to Florida were the Panthers not something along the lines of perennial Stanley Cup contenders.
If there’s going to be a historic comeback in the Stanley Cup Final, it will have to start with him. Tkachuk is ailing after sustaining an apparent upper-body injury in Game 3 on Thursday. Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky is human again after giving up more goals in the first four games of the Cup Final than he did in his previous seven. The Panthers’ depth is thinner than usual because of injuries and their margin for error finally gone, and it leaves Barkov — the player Tkachuk calls the best player on the team, just as star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau did before him — to try to lead Florida to the unthinkable.
“Your healthy men drive the bus now,” coach Paul Maurice said Sunday. “When you get later in a series and certainly in our situation, you’re not going to leave Barkov on the bench very much.”
Only one team has ever rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win the championship and that was in the 1942 Stanley Cup Final. A turnaround in this Final would be something the league hasn’t seen in more than 80 years, and an achievement 30 years in the making for the Panthers and a decade in the making for Barkov.
It took the Finnish forward 10 years to finally get to this point — struggling through more losses than wins for more than three-fourths of his time in Florida — and now he has a chance to cement his legacy in a way few individuals can.
Florida is here because of him. In all likelihood, the Panthers will come up just short of the ultimate prize, but Barkov will try to drag them there for the rest of this best-of-7 series.
He tried to do it in Game 4 on Saturday. The Panthers were down by three goals late in the second period when he picked up his first point of the series, assisting star defenseman Brandon Montour on a fluky-but-needed goal. In the third period, Barkov scored his first goal of the series, crashing to the net in transition and finishing a one-timer from Montour to pull Florida within a goal with 16:10 left before it came up short 3-2.
“He definitely elevated his game. He’s our leader, our captain and he’s an unbelievable player,” left wing Carter Verhaeghe said. “That’s kind of been the story with our whole team: Everyone’s trying to find a way to step up at certain times and it was him, and he gave us a chance to win the game or get it tied.”
With Tkachuk battling through his injury and limited to just four shifts in the third period, Barkov was the Panthers’ best player, with a goal, an assist, six shots and a blocked shot.
“We just raised the pace of the game,” Barkov said. “We wanted to score more. I think that might be it.”
It was his most productive performance of the championship series. Points do not tell the whole story, though.
Barkov also leads all players with a 58.2 faceoff percentage in the Final and is tied for Tkachuk for best in the series in Corsi for percentage — Florida has a gigantic 77-43 edge in shot attempts when Barkov is on the ice for 5-on-5 play, meaning he’s excelling at controlling possession in this series. Although Barkov is also usually a point-a-game forward, his scoring is often secondary to everything else he does.
On Tuesday, the Panthers will need to get their offense from somewhere, though, and Barkov is as good a source as any. He will have to be if Florida is going to extend its season a few more days.
“Such a driver,” Maurice said. “He’s quietly been so good for us because it’s not all the overtime winners that draw attention. You love to see those guys elevate their game for their teams.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2023 at 5:54 PM.
