Heat fall, Panthers need miracle on ice after both lose on rare day for Miami sports | Opinion
One game was an unexpected rout. The other game was closer than your next breath. Both results deflated South Florida on the rarest of days in the region’s sports history.
The Miami Heat lost Game 1 of their NBA first round playoff series, 109-107, in Milwaukee Saturday, on a Bucks shot with 00.5 left — a half-second —- in overtime.
That was just after the Florida Panthers had fallen by a wincing 6-2 in Game 4 of their NHL first-round series in Tampa to fall behind 3-1 and reach the brink of elimination.
It marked one of the biggest days in South Florida sports history, because it was only the third time in the two franchises’ combined history that both had a playoff game on the same day. (The only other times were on April 17 and 20, 2016. Coincidentally, those occasions also found the Panthers and Heat both on the road.)
The rarity will recur on Monday, with the Cats facing a literal must-win game back home in Sunrise and the Heat again in Milwaukee.
The Heat had eliminated favored Milwaukee 4-1 in the second round of the playoffs last September en route to unexpectedly reaching the NBA Finals.
On Saturday, after Jimmy Butler’s driving layup forced overtime, Miami led in the closing seconds on Goran Dragic’s three-point bucket but lost on Khris Middleton’s field goal in the last second.
The Heat set a franchise playoff record with 20 made three-point shots, as Duncan Robinson tied the individual club postseason mark with seven threes. The bad news? Miami was better long-range than from 2-point lead and shot just 36.4 percent overall.
The team’s two best players, Butler and Bam Adebayo, were a combined 8-for-37 shooting. Butler was 4-for-22 for 17 points, after he’d scorched Milwaukee for 40 in Game 1 of last year’s playoff series.
Expect both to bounce back offensively in Game 2. But can the record-setting three-point shots also be expected? Saturday made it feel like the dawn of a seven-game series. And how good can Milwaukee feel to have barely won at home on a day when Butler, Adebayo and Tyler Herro shot a combined 10-for-47?
Over on the hockey side, if the Panthers are going to win their first playoff series in 25 years, they’re going to climb a mountain to do it.
The rout-loss for a 3-1 series hole puts the historical math anvil-heavy on Panthers shoulders.
In league history teams trailing 3-1 in a best-of-7 run the table to win and advance only 9.4 percent of the time.
Florida’s 1-in-10 odds from here are helped by the fact Games 5 and 7, if it gets that far, will be back home in Sunrise. But that is offset by Tampa, reigning hockey champion, being a pedigreed, max-tough foe.
“We’re still ready to win,” said team captain Aleksander Barkov. “Forget about this one really quick, go back home and play the right way for 60 minutes. That’s the only way.”
Coach Joel Quenneville must first sort out his goaltending situation, as that has been one big difference in this matchup of two high-powered attacks.
Chris Driedger was pulled in the previous game after a nightmare five-goal sequence against him. On Saturday, Sergei Bobrovsky started in the crease but also was yanked after five times hearing the home horn blast
Quenneville must figure out what goalie he trusts most to limit the Lightning, or if anybody can.
Down 3-1, the idea of deploying super-rookie Spencer Knight might be a surprise ace ready to be shown. He was 4-0 starting during the season and looked great in the brevity of his debut. But is a kid who just turned 20 ready for the postseason stage and its must-win pressure?
Somebody back there needs to give Florida a fighting shot at three straight wins or the best regular season in franchise history will have gone for naught.
“We’ll reconvene and look at options,” Quenneville said.
The Panthers ominously trailed 3-1 Saturday after the opening period despite dominating the first 20 in time of possession and shots on goal.
The Lightning struck only three minutes in on an Anthony Cirelli breakaway that caught Florida in a bungled, ill-timed line change. The game was 4-on-4, and the Panthers had only three on the ice when the horn blasted, after apparent confusion on the bench.
The hole was 2-0 7:24 in when Yanni Gourde, at the edge of the crease, redirected a shot from Nikita Kucherov.
Gourde then let the briefly Cats back in the game by taunting and shoving Jonathan Huberdeau for a two-minute penalty. Florida put five forwards on the ice and, fittingly, Huberdeau himself took advantage, depositing a power-play goal at 8:49 and then cupping his gloved hand to an ear toward the suddenly quiet crowd.
Noise again at 16:45, though, as Ondrej Palat, in close, touched home an Erik Cernak long-range blast to make it 3-1. More noise as Alex Killorn netted a pair of second-period goals to make it a 5-1 spanking and chase Bobrovsky off the ice, replaced by Driedger.
It was 5-2 on Carter Verhaeghe’s goal late in the second, but by then the game seemed realistically out of reach (even before Tampa scored yet again).
The onus on the Panthers to win Saturday was heavy and clear. In NHL history teams that lead a best-of-7 series 3-1 go on to win and advance at an astronomical 90 percent. The Cats needed to avoid facing that near-impossible hurdle and instead get to 2-2 and head home for Game 5 full of momentum and belief, but picked a bad day to have a bad day.
Thursday’s 6-5 overtime thriller had given Florida new life in the series. The comeback dealt Tampa Bay its first loss all season when leading after two periods; the Lightning had been 28-0 including 2-0 this series.
Afterward Quenneville said: “All of a sudden, the picture changes completely. We needed something to feel good about ourselves. I knew we had a great run for the whole year and all of a sudden the alternative to [Thursday’s] result would’ve been a really ugly damper on the whole year.”
Saturday brought those same stakes. Such is the enormous difference between going down 3-1 and getting level at 2-2.
The Miami Heat proved on Saturday they are Milwaukee’s equal and have plenty of time left in a postseason that has just begun.
No such time left for a Florida Panthers team that is one loss away from yet another early playoff exit and that “ugly damper on the whole year.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2021 at 3:30 PM.
