After going down 3-1 to Boston in the first round, the Panthers have won 10 of 11 games since
Waking up on Tuesday, fans of the Florida Panthers probably had a bit of a strange experience.
You open your eyes, let the first thoughts of the day come into your mind…and then comes the sudden and inevitable question.
“Did that really happen last night?”
It must be a great feeling when the realization quickly arrives that yes, the Panthers did in fact win Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final on Monday.
Yes, it came on the shoulders of another outstanding performance by emerging Conn Smythe Trophy candidate (and likely favorite at this point) Sergei Bobrovsky.
And yes, the victory puts Florida one win away from reaching the Stanley Cup Final.
The Panthers have now reeled off wins in 10 of their past 11 playoff games.
They are on the cusp of eliminating the Carolina Hurricanes, the second-best team in the NHL during the regular season, after having already dispatched the 111-point Toronto Maple Leafs during round two and before that, the record-breaking, Presidents’ Trophy-winning Boston Bruins in a shocking, first-round upset.
It has been a truly remarkable run by the eight-seed Panthers, and they have been able to do it by keeping the same, one game at a time mindset throughout their journey.
“The best we could have done today was win one game,” Florida forward Sam Reinhart said following Game 3. “Tomorrow is all about recovering and coming back, and in two days we have an opportunity win one game. That's the way it's been for months, and it's not changing any time soon for us.”
That mentality of keeping your head down and focusing only on what is right in front of you has worked quite well for the Panthers to this point.
It’s what helped them close out the regular season on a 12-5-2 run that got them into the playoffs in the first place.
Without that late-season surge, you’re not reading this story.
Some other team is being talked about as the surprising club of the Cup tourney, and the Panthers players are scattered across the globe doing whatever they do during the offseason.
Florida began playing a grinding, physical, in your face brand of hockey that has exasperated their opponents to the point where teams that were dominant during the regular season are unable to play how they want and out of frustration, opening up their game and coming out of their structured styles, which plays right into the Panthers’ paws.
It’s what has put them one win away from playing for the Stanley Cup.
“We're really happy with what we're trying to do,” said Panthers center Anton Lundell. “We go one game at a time.”
Florida Head Coach Paul Maurice was hired on the second day of summer last June. From the very beginning, Maurice and his staff have been working both on the ice and off to implement a new style of play to the Panthers.
The high-flying, wide-open, fun, exciting way Florida played last season, the year they won the Presidents' Trophy and set franchise records for wins and points, was not going to work and needed to be changed. It’s why Maurice was hired.
It took a while, months really, before the new approach began to take hold. Players began to figure out not only when and where they needed to be strategically, but how much more work and effort it was going to take to get there.
Understanding what would be required to properly play Maurice’s way was one thing, but starting to see the positive results from doing it consistently was quite another.
It’s what sparked the Panthers’ whole turnaround, and it’s what has Florida playing a brand of hockey that no team in the playoffs wants to deal with.
“I feel we had to learn so many lessons to get to where we are today,” Maurice said.
Now all Florida has to do is win one game to advance, and you can almost hear Bob Barker explaining to The Price Is Right audience that the Panthers have done so well to this point, they get not one, not two, not three, but up to four chances to get that win.
Of course, nobody wants to use up those chances. Giving Carolina any sense of hope and opportunity would not be a good thing.
The Hurricanes were the NHL’s second-best team this season, finishing the year with an impressive 52 wins and 113 points.
And while yes, Florida has a comfortable 3-0 lead in the series, those three wins have been very tightly contested. They were all one-goal games, two of which requiring overtime to decide a victor.
Game 4 will probably be more of the same.
“They have a great team, they have great players and it’s going to be another fight,” said Bobrovsky, adding, “We’re definitely excited for it.”
It should be quite a night at FLA Live Arena.
The building was packed to the gills on Monday night for Game 3, and despite there only being a single goal scored in the contest, fans were extremely loud and energized throughout.
Considering the gravity of the game, the opportunity it presents and the fanbase desperate to see their team do something it hasn’t done in almost 30 years, the vibe inside the building on Wednesday should be unlike anything we’ve seen the arena since it opened in October of 1998.
Florida can advance to the Stanley Cup Final with a win.
But to the players, it’s just another game.
“We're not going to look at it like that. It's one game,” said Panthers center Sam Bennett. “It's just another hockey game, and that's the only way we can focus on it. I'm sure they're going to come out and play desperate. The toughest one to win is the fourth one, but we're just going to go out there and play another hockey game.”