Paul Maurice doesn’t believe in momentum.
As far as the Florida Panthers head coach is concerned, every game, every period and every shift are independent of one another.
It’s up to the players to make things happen.
Sometimes, like in Florida’s case leading up to Game 3, there can be more pressure on one team than the other.
With the even series now a best-of-three, one of the teams is going to put the other on the brink of elimination.
Heading into Wednesday’s game, though, both teams should be feeling fairly loose.
“There’s no pressure coming into this next game,” Maurice said. “It’s all energy.”
After dropping the first two games of the series in Toronto, there was plenty of pressure on Florida heading into Game 3, something Maurice acknowledged on Monday.
Following that crucial win, Florida came out in Game 4 on Sunday and played possibly their best game of the postseason to even the series at two games apiece.
That would lend to the idea that the Panthers now were in control of the series, that they had figured something out and had a new edge over the Leafs.
Maurice was quick to throw water on that idea.
“There’s no secret, there’s no momentum,” he said. “It’s a grind, shift after shift.”
In terms of elements of a previous game impacting the remaining battles to come, that’s where some of the increasing physicality enters the conversation.
While this hasn’t been a particularly nasty series, there has been a noticeable uptick in heavy hits and post-whistle scrums.
At least that was the case from Game 3 to Game 4.
Then there was the incident at the buzzer on Sunday.
As the clock expired on Florida’s 2-0 victory, the puck was tied up along the boards in the corner to the left of Sergei Bobrovsky.
The scrum that went on for a good few minutes was highlighted by a hit from behind on Panthers Captain Sasha Barkov from Toronto’s Max Domi.
Barkov, fortunately, popped right up, and Maurice said both after the game Sunday and again on Monday that his captain was fine.
Domi was fined $5,000, the maximum allowable, by the NHL Department of Player Safety for the hit, and Maurice had nothing to say about it when asked Monday.
That left a question of how much of that anger and ferocity would carry over to the following game from the players.
“It won’t,” Maurice said. “The hockey is the most important thing. We’ve had bigger dustups at the end of games, and I’ve seen them on TV too, it’s not always our team.”
We’ll see about that, but regardless of the physical play, Game 5 promises to be the best of the series so far.
The puck drops in Toronto on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
Don’t forget your popcorn!
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