Florida leads their best-of-7 series with Tampa Bay 3-1, with Game 5 coming up in Sunrise
Florida leads their best-of-7 series with Tampa Bay 3-1, with Game 5 coming up in Sunrise
The Florida Panthers are heading back home with more work to do following their Game 4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
While getting dropped 6-3 in their opponents’ barn can burn, there are some positives can be drawn from Florida’s first loss of the postseason.
We’ll start with the game itself.
Florida did fall behind early, a rare recent night in which the Cats failed to get off to a strong start, but they fought back from a pair of three-goal deficits in an extremely hostile building and nearly tied the game before ultimately fizzing out in the third period.
“It’s tough to come back from a three-goal lead, but we almost did,” said Panthers captain Sasha Barkov. “That’s good by us, but obviously we don’t want that to ever happen again.”
So yeah, there are some positives that can be plucked from the near comeback.
The majority of those positives are going to come from the second period, the stanza in which there were only two penalties called and the teams played over 17 minutes of five-on-five.
It’s not a coincidence.
Zooming out a bit, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice was quick to remind us after the game that despite the loss, the Cats are still in a pretty good spot.
“You know what’s interesting is the shift outside the room is always far greater than the shift in the room,” he said. “We did what we needed to do at home, we won the first two games, and then we did what we needed to do on the road, we split.”
He’s not wrong.
When you take away the disappointment of failing to complete the sweep, Florida is still in prime position to knock out their cross-state rivals and move on to round two for the third consecutive postseason.
“Up 3-0, man you want to win that fourth one, but they’ve got a pretty good team over there, they don't want to lose that fourth one,” said Maurice. “So we're gonna fool around with some things, fire ourselves back up. I think the intensity just continues to grow, I think it’ll get faster and faster as we go, and you enjoy the hell out of it.”
“We all know it’s a battle,” added Barkov. “It’s best-of-7. Now we’re up 3-1 going home, we’re in a good spot.”
Game 5 will take place Monday at 7 p.m. from Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.
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