No Game 7 as Florida Panthers’ 4-0 loss in Tampa Bay ends an encouraging season too soon | Opinion
Call this Florida Panthers season a failure, but only if you are feeling in a particularly cruel mood, and don’t mind being shouted down by reason.
It ended Wednesday night in Tampa Bay, but it didn’t feel quite right.
It ended in the first round, but the evenness and quality of play made it seem more like what we used to call a conference finals.
Any other year, any other not-emerging-from-a-pandemic-with-different-playoff-rules season, Florida surely would be savoring its second-round matchup right now after having waltzed past the much easier opening opponent it would have faced.
It’s the devil’s luck that the Panthers, under the NHL’s temporary weird postseason format, had to play the reigning league champion Lightning to start the Stanley Cup playoffs. Crazy, almost. Unfair, dare say.
Tampa Bay eliminated Florida 4-0 Wednesday night in Game 6, for a 4-2 series advance.
That leaves the Miami Heat as South Florida’s last hope now, and the Heat better be as desperate as the Panthers were, down 2-0 and look for a home lift in Games 3 and 4 here Thursday night and Saturday afternoon.
The Lightning deserved the series result, yes. But no more than the Cats -- on the heel of the best regular season in their 27-year history -- deserved better than to draw a pedigreed champion in the opening round.
Spencer Knight quite literally had been the Knight in shining armor in leading the Panthers’ 4-1 home victory in Game 5, becoming, at 20 years 35 days, the youngest goaltender in NHL history to win when facing elimination in a playoff game. Most remarkably, perhaps, Tampa Bay scored on its first shot! The crowd groaned, a pin prick to the party balloon. The kid could have unraveled right then. Become a puddle on the ice.
Instead he stopped the next 36 straight shots on goal.
“How patient and cool he was in the net,” coach Joel Quenneville said after Wednesday’s morning skate in Tampa. “His composure.”
It was no surprise.
“First time I met him,” recalled Q, “the first thing that jumps out at you is how mature he is for his age.”
Knight fell to earth Wednesday. Pat Maroon scored on Tampa’s first shot. Knight let in a second-period power play slap shot by Steven Stamkos. Then Brayden Point made the horn sound again in the third. (Knight was off ice, pulled before Alex Killorn finished the scoring late).
Win again in Game 6 to even the series and Knight would have been an instant folk hero. One not yet old enough for a legal drink in a bar. He would have led the Panthers to their first game 6 win since May 30, 1996.
Instead, while Knight was alright, Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy was better. He’s state of the art, the best goalie in the league and showed it, repelling all 29 Florida shots on goal, answering every rush and all the chaos near his crease brought by the desperate, fighting-for-their-season’s-life Cats.
The loss did more than end an encouraging season for Florida.
It denied fans who feed on drama maybe the best three syllables in all sports:
Game 7.
South Florida’s teams in Game 7 sports, the Heat, Marlins and Panthers, have played a combined 89 seasons with a combined 14 Game 7s. They are rare gems, these ultimate must-wins.
The Heat are 6-4 in them, the Marlins 2-0 and the Panthers 1-1.
The last one we’ve had was Heat at Toronto in 2016. The last at home was that same year, two weeks earlier.
The Panthers’ only Game 7s have been in magical, rat-strewn ‘96 and in 2012.
I trust the Cats’ direction under the second-year coach Quenneville, a Hall of Famer, and new general manager Bill Zito.
I trust that Knight, the former top draft pick, could be the answer at goal for a lot of years.
I trust in the young-veteran core of the team in Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau.
Florida still needs that next step, though. Because the best regulat season in club history obviously isn’t enough.
Panthers owner Vinnie Viola told fans two days ago: “The mission is not complete. It won’t be until we’re standing up here with the Stanley Cup. We will win the Stanley Cup. It’s our commitment to you.”
Micky Arison and Pat Riley have delivered on such a promise. Elsewhere in town, Viola in hockey, Derek Jeter with the Marlins, the folks running the Dolphins, David Beckham of Inter Miami -- they can all talk as big as they like, but the bottom line will will judge them.
Original Dolphins owner stood in a hotel lobby on a road trip late in a season not ending good enough, circa late ‘80s. I heard him say he was worried his club was “wasting the Marino years.”
The Panthers should be hell-bent to make sure they aren’t doing that with the Barkov/Huberdeau years.
The imperative to make good better and get to great must be the priority in an offseason starting too soon.
The Panthers are getting there. But getting there and being there are not quite the same.
