Cote: Florida Panthers better than last year’s champs as East final Game 2 tests Carolina resolve | Opinion
Something for the rest of the NHL to consider as hockey digs into its conference finals:
This Florida Panthers team that won the Stanley Cup last season — it’s better now. The champions, the best team on ice, improved.
The Cats are little more than halfway to proving it, but that is what the eye test tells us two playoff rounds in and after Tuesday night’s 5-2 road victory in Carolina in Game 1 of the Eastern finals.
Game 2 is back in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday night — the Panthers are now 6-2 on the road this postseason — before the series dips south to Sunrise for two Saturday and Monday.
The series opener got physical with Carolina dishing some dirty on an elbow to the head of Cats goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and Brad Marchand taking an intentional puck from Shayne Gostisbehere. It felt like a Hurricanes team knowing it does not own the offensive firepower to keep p with Florida and instantly leaking desperation.
“I didn’t love our game tonight, but I understood it,” coach Paul Maurice said afterward. “A completely different style change [from the first two playoff opponents]. We struggled with their rush game. We were just OK the way we handled it. We got work to do.”
You have to love a coach’s dissatisfaction after a 5-2 win.
“It was better [rewatching] on video than [live] behind the bench,” Maurice allowed on Wednesday.
That the Panthers’ intention is a repeat championship is clear if subtly stated.
“We have one goal in mind, and that’s going to be our focus the whole way,” as goal scorer Sam Bennett put it afterward.
Said first-year Cat Tomas Nosek: “I want that ring. It’s the reason I joined the Panthers.”
These teams also met in the East finals two years, the Panthers with a 4-0 sweep.
Well, unless you ask Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour.
“The unfortunate part is that we’re going to look back and everyone’s going to say you got swept and that’s not what happened,” he actually said. “I watched the games. I’m there. We’re in the game. We didn’t lose four games. We got beat but we were right there. This could have went the other way. Not to take anything away from the other team because they played hard.”
In fairness, the Panthers’ four-game sweep was by four one-goal scores, two of them in overtime. Nice of Brind’Amour to at least acknowledge Florida had played hard, even if he did not acknowledge the sweep.
Carolina, in fact, entered Tuesday having lost 12 straight games in the conference finals. Make it 13.
Hopefully Brind’Amour might grudgingly admit his team lost Tuesday night?
He did.
“That’s how they play,” he said of the Panthers. “They’re the best, and we’re trying to beat it. They got some real high-end scorers. When we get our chances we gotta take them.”
The Panthers were outshot 33-20 but cashed two power-play goals and were in command most of the night.
Florida led 1-0 mid-first period on Carter Verhaeghe’s power-play backhander off a gorgeous setup pass by Matthew Tkachuk, with Aleksander Barkov also involved.
It was 2-0 a few minutes later on an Aaron Ekblad snap shot that capitalized on a turnover by the Canes’ Jordan Staal — the 12th goal by a Cats defenseman this postseason. Evan Rodriguez fed Ekblad, who put it upper-net into the corner over goalie Frederik Andersen’s left shoulder.
Carolina drew within 2-1 with 14.8 seconds left in the opening period when Sebastian Aho redirected the puck into the net off his right skate. Bobrovsky argued it was an illegal kick by Aho and Maurice considered a protest, but decided against it.
The Panthers jumped to a big 3-1 lead three minutes into the second period when Florida’s non-stars shone yet again, this time on A.J. Greer’s snap shot finishing a pass from Niko Mikkola.
Maurice calls Mikkola “The Condor.” “Largest bird of prey,” he explained with a smile.
“No-hesitation hockey,” Greer called what his team played Tuesday.
Florida further deflated the home crowd at 4-1 six minutes into the third on Sam Bennett’s wrist shot on a power play, his team-leading seventh goal of these playoffs.
It was 5-1 with five minutes left on Eetu Luostarinen’s goal off a faceoff.
Carolina made the final score with a too-little-too-late goal with 3:41 left.
Seventeen different Panthers have scored a goal this postseason, including seven different defensemen, as Florida continues to flex its four-line depth. Tkachuk has not scored a goal in nine consecutive playoff games now, yet the club’s depth has made up for that.
The late-season addition of Marchand, though he had a relatively quiet game Tuesday, is another big reason this Cats team is better than last year’s.
Oh, and Bobrovsky was brilliant, which by now is to be pretty much assumed unless you hear otherwise.
Maurice had shut down any speculation that Florida was at a disadvantage Tuesday playing on only one day’s rest after their seven-game series vs. Toronto against a more-rested Carolina.
“I would schedule it exactly as it is now given the choice,” he said before the game. “We want to keep going. We played nine games in 15 days to end the season. This [playoffs] is the lightest schedule we’ve had this year. We’re fine.”
The ensuing Game 1 result underlined the sentiment.
Following Florida’s 4-1 dispatch of rival Tampa Bay in the first round and seven games to end Toronto’s season, the East finals presents its own dynamic, because the Panthers and Hurricanes are mirror images in terms of defense-first mindsets.
“We are the two teams in the East that that play the most consistently to their identity on a regular basis,” Maurice said.
“The two tightest-checking teams in the league,” Ekblad said.
The franchises’ similarities do not end there.
Both entered the NHL in the 1990s — the Panthers as an expansion team in 1993-94, the Hurricanes in 1997-98 inheriting the relocating Hartford Whalers. Each is a one-time Stanley Cup champ, Carolina in 2006 and Florida last season. Both have made the playoffs the past six seasons.
One big difference:
One of the coaches, Florida’s Maurice, was fired not once but twice by the other team — both in-season sackings. Maurice coached Carolina in two different terms for 11 combined seasons, but was fired in the midst of both the 2003-04 and 2011-12 seasons.
If there is a grudge (he says no), there was payback two years ago, with another opportunity now. Brind’Amour, by the way, was Maurice’s young Carolina assistant back then, the student still chasing the teacher.
The Panthers entered this East finals as the betting favorite to win it all and repeat as Stanley Cup champs.
Tuesday, emphatically, they showed why.
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 10:59 PM.
