If the Panthers weren’t the underdog before, they are now — and need to embrace it
Heading into their second-round Stanley Cup playoffs series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers star winger Matthew Tkachuk was asked about how his team has adjusted to being the favorites as defending Stanley Cup champions compared to an underdog role in which they have thrived over the past two postseasons.
Tkachuk’s response to that assertion was blunt.
“I don’t think we are [the favorite],” Tkachuk said Monday. “I mean, we’re on the road here to start, so they obviously had a better year than we did. We’re going to relish that [underdog] role.”
They have no choice now.
After dropping each of the first two games of this series — first a 5-4 loss on Monday in which a late rally couldn’t negate a sluggish start, then a 4-3 loss on Wednesday in which they couldn’t sustain momentum — the Panthers head back to South Florida in a precarious position. Florida has never won a best-of-7 playoff series after starting 0-2. In NHL history, a team that starts 0-2 is 57-358 all-time — winning the series just 13.7% of the time.
The Panthers, an experienced bunch with most of the roster having been part of at least one of their runs to consecutive Stanley Cup Finals during the past two years, understand the position they’re in. They are also cognizant that they can’t let the magnitude of the situation hamper them.
They have to get their game right and get it right fast. That starts Friday when they host Game 3 at Amerant Bank Arena (7 p.m., TNT, truTV, Max).
“You win one game or you lose one game and it can change anything,” Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said. “A lot of success in the playoffs is how you control your losses and how you learn from it.”
The Panthers have plenty of experience to draw back on. While they haven’t been down 0-2 in a series since the 2023 Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden Knights, which they eventually lost in five games, Florida did trail the Boston Bruins 3-1 in the first round of the 2023 playoffs and rattled off three consecutive wins to pull off the upset and advance. The Panthers also had to rebound from three consecutive losses to the Edmonton Oilers in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final after going up 3-0 to eventually secure the franchise’s first ever championship in seven games.
“It’s important to kind of draw back on it,” Reinhart said. “When you look at the playoffs, you know that in between — whether you won or you lost — is as important as ever to recover and regroup. No matter what happened the night before or a couple nights prior, it doesn’t change how we go about our day today. It’s about recovering and putting the best foot forward to play our best game [Friday] night to get back in this thing.”
The Panthers know they have been far from their best so far. The team’s defense, its backbone to success, has been inconsistent through two games against the Maple Leafs. Sloppy turnovers, plenty of rush chances against and the inability to control the game in the neutral zone have played into their early demise.
“There biggest threat is they’re very good on the rush,” veteran forward Brad Marchand said. “You’ve got to be above them. It seemed like every time we gave them the opportunity to get above us, they created something or capitalized on it. It just shows how dangerous they are.”
Added Panthers coach Paul Maurice: “You have to know your game. We talk about that an awful lot. There’s lots of stuff that we like about our game that we think we can improve on and do more with. We’ll take a look at it and get better.’’
The Panthers have no choice. If they don’t get better, they’ll be on the brink of elimination before they know it.
But there’s also no panic in this team, at least not yet. They understand the task in front of them. They know an opportunity is still there for the taking.
“It’s one day at a time,” Marchand said. “You can’t get too high and you can’t get too low. We’re OK in here. We have a lot of belief in our in our group, in our room, in our experience. Obviously, they’re fighting for lives. They came ready to play in this round, and we see that. But these series can change on a dime and and it’s all about that next one. We’re living for tomorrow right now.”
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