Nobody’s underdog: Florida Panthers’ 3-2 win in Toronto for 2-0 lead a statement & declaration | Opinion
The underdog card the Florida Panthers have rightly held up until now — it’s going to be a bit tougher to play moving forward.
Because if you didn’t know it yet, you better know it now:
This is a team playing as as good as any in the NHL at the moment. This is a team capable of winning the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.
This is a team that just came from behind to beat the Maple Leafs 3-2 on Thursday for a 2-0 series lead, both wins in Toronto, to take command of this second round series as it heads back to South Florida.
After just winning three elimination games in a row to get here against a Boston Bruins team that had the single-greatest regular season ever.
This is a team that has won five games in a row, four on the road, against two teams supposedly clearly better.
The mystique of “playoff hockey” has found its embodiment in the No, 8-seed Panthers, the team that scrambled late to barely made the playoffs at all but now is setting the ice on fire.
Maple Leafs fans had chanted, “We want Florida!” before this series.
What say now, eh?
The first period was as frantic as you’d expect — Toronto coming out with the desperation of a favored team that had lost the series opener at home, and Florida on its heels trying to defend that urgent surge.
Maple Leafs were up 2-1 when the first period ended. And they were up fast.
The home building lit up just 2:20 in on Alexsander Kerfoot’s deposit of a deflected shot in close, and Toronto was up by two goals only 5:10 in when Ryan O’Reilly lifted a backside mid-ranger past Sergei Bobrovsky on a power play. The Maple Leafs had been on an 0-for-8 skid with a man advantage in these playoffs before the timely end to that slump.
“They’re rolling tonight. Just stay in the fight,” Cats coach Paul Maurice said he was thinking then.
Florida halved the lead with its crucial first goal just past midway through the first when Anton Lundell’s first score of the postseason from near the crease finished a textbook pass from Sam Reinhart.
The Leafs put 16 shots on net to Florida’s nine in the opening period, playing like a team that knew what a 2-0 series hold would feel like heading for a pair in South Florida.
They’d have that feeling soon.
The second period set out like a bullet train for Florida with a pair of goals in the first 66 seconds and a 3-2 lead.
It was tied when Aleksander Barkov, the calm assassin, found the net off an Anthony Duclair pass — Barkov reacting with been-there, done that nonchalance as the crowd went mute.
Seconds later it was 3-2, Cats, on an Gustav Forsling goal — both back-to-back scores set up by careless turnovers, gifts, by Toronto. Matthew Tkachuk’s assist on Forsling’s shot was his 10th of this postseason, tying a Panthers franchise record. Forsling’s goal proved to be the game-winner.
No team will outwork or out-want the Cats. Florida, down 2-0 on the road, out-shot, winning only 31.5 percent of the faceoffs, giving up puck possession, and somehow still finding a way to win.
“We didn’t think we had much in our legs tonight,” Maurice said. “We were just battling through. It wasn’t a perfect game for us by any means. We stayed in the fight.”
They did because of Bobrovsky. He was brilliant against a sustained Maple Leafs assault in response to those quick Florida goals.
“You would expect the start by (Toronto),” Maurice said on TV as the second period ended. “It’s a hell of a game.”
The score never changed because Bobrovsky was the very player they dreamed they’d signed for all that money a few years ago.
He saved the game. Toronto came full-bore in the third period. It looked and felt like Florida was playing a man down. Or two. The Leafs tying it seemed inevitable. But “Bob” kept coming up big. (One Leafs shot off the crossbar and another off the post didn’t hurt -- but those near-misses were on both ends.)
“Yeah it was fun, you know?” first-star-of-the-game Bobrovsky said afterward. “Fun road. Great hockey. The atmosphere for sure is good in the lockerroom.”
Florida heads home for Game 3 back in Sunrise on Sunday.
This is the first time the Panthers have held a 2-0 series lead since the first round in 1996, when they reached their only Stanley Cup Final.
In NHL history teams up 2-0 in a best-of-7 series have won 340 series and lost 53, an 86.5 percent likelihood to advance.
But how will Florida now adjust to the role of favorite?
“We’ve been the crazy underdog story and that hasn’t changed,” Tkachuk had said entering this series.
“We’re just hoping to get to a seventh game,” Maurice had said before Thursday’s Game 2.
“We like being the underdog,” Forsling had said.
The Florida Panthers are sneaking up on nobody any more. They are nobody’s underdog.
Said Lundell: “We proved we’re a good team.”
If this isn’t a team to be feared, one contending for a championship, let the opponent that can prove it do so.
This story was originally published May 4, 2023 at 10:12 PM.
