Uh oh? No. 1 seed Florida Panthers collapse late at home, fall 4-2 in NHL playoff Game 1 | Opinion
The best team in hockey (the one with the best record, anyway) likes to proclaim, “This is Panthers Territory!”
Fitting, then, because what commenced Tuesday night is in every way uncharted territory for Florida.
Never before in this franchise’s 28 seasons have the Panthers begun an NHL postseason this good or carrying this kind of weight of expectations on those thin skate blades.
No such promise was attached to the 1996 team that reached the Stanley Cup Final before getting swept. Those were Cinderella Cats, lunch-pail underdogs all the way.
Not now.
‘Time to hunt,’ as the team’s slogan says.
Except now they are the hunted.
Now, this offensive juggernaut is expected not only to win the club’s first playoff series since ‘96 -- to end that 26-year drought and six first-round exits in six attempts since -- but to make a deep run. To be champions, even.
An inauspicious start, then.
“We kind of self-destructed,” interim coach Andrew Brunette put it bluntly. And accurately.
Florida overcame an early deficit, led, but then lost 4-2 to the Washington Capitals in the Sunrise barn Tuesday in Game 1 of this first-round series.
It is too early to recall the ghosts of first-round failures past. But it won’t be if Florida does not bounce back in Game 2 of the best-of-7 back here Thursday night -- when the pressure will be all on the Cats.
Florida was 39-0 in the regular season when carrying a lead into the third period. They did that in the playoff opener and lost. Choking is a harsh word, but that will be the narrative perhaps if the Cats lose Game 2. Florida has not won a Game 1 since 1997.
One night after the Miami Heat won to open their second-round series, the Broward County edition of the playoffs began but with the home crowd, which included Heat O.G. Udonis Haslem and rapper Kodak Black, quiet at the end.
The Cats’ Patric Hornqvist had put the team’s mindset so simply after Tuesday’s morning skate, except actually doing what he said will be the hard part amid the escalating intensity of in these Stanley Cup playoffs.
“We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing the whole season,” he said. “Now we just have to do it in the postseason, too. Take it to the next level.”
What the Panthers have done all season is be the best. NHL Presidents Cup for best record (58-18-6) and most points (122), with club records for both. More goals scored (340) than any team since 1996, led by Jonathan Huberdeau’s team record for individual points with 115. A crazy-good home record of 34-7-0.
Simply point, you could argue the Panthers just had the single greatest regular season of any South Florida pro team since the 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 en route to the Perfect Season.
“It’s our year,” said Huberdeau. “We’ve been waiting for this all year.”
Everything starts over, though.
“We’ve done special things this year,” said Aleksander Barkov, whose 39 goals led the team, “but that doesn’t matter in Game 1.”
‘Do it in the playoffs.’ That is the demand of Florida. Do what this club hasn’t done in 26 years.
Nothing has derailed this team yet. Not even the early-season bombshell that saw star coach Joel Quenneville forced to resign in controversy over his role in a Chicago Blackhawks scandal 10 years earlier.
The Cats kept winning. No matter that interim coach Andrew Brunette had never led a team before at any level.
Tuesday, though, a defensive lapses in the third period led to a breakaway goal by the Capitals’ Evgeny Kuznetsov to tie it and by T.J. Oshie and Lars Eller for the final margin.
That erased a 2-1 Florida lead when Claude Giroux found a hole from close range. The Cats traded for the veteran forward on March 19 with the playoffs in mind. Call it a dividend paid.
The 1-1 knot after the first period was worth a sigh of relief from the home fans. Washington was in Florida’s end a lot thanks in part to three early Cats penalties -- one that saw them briefly two men down. Tom Wilson’s power-play goal came only 3:48 into the game before the Panthers equalized on Sam Bennett’s goal at 17:55, only their ninth shot of the period to Washington’s 16.
The Panthers have had this magic trick they’ve just about perfected this season.
They make deficits disappear with the NHL’s highest-scoring offense in 26 years. But not Tuesday.
The onus on Florida to reprise 1996 or at least to win a damn series hovers over this postseason. It’s been awhile.
Six current Panthers weren’t even born then. Dan Marino was still gunslinging for the Dolphins. Butch Davis was the Canes coach and Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway were leading the Heat.
It was ancient history, relatively speaking.
Florida began the postseason at full strength, with top defenseman Aaron Ekblad back from a knee injury and on the ice for the first time since March 18.
“He really directs the way we play,” said Brunette.
Washington, too, welcomed back ageless leading scorer Alex Ovechkin after he’d missed the past three games with a shoulder injury.
Ovechkin may yet be a handful in these teams’ first-ever playoff meeting.
But how on earth can mid-pack Capitals defense and goaltending hope to contain Florida’s offensive tsunami?
They did Tuesday night in a most humbling playoff start for the best team in hockey -- one that must now prove all over again that it still is.
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 10:16 PM.
