Thanks to a Game 3 overtime victory, the Florida Panthers - led by head coach Paul Maurice - are right back in the Stanley Cup Final.
It might not have been the way that Coach Mo wanted to start the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final series, but heading home down 2-0 was not the worst case scenario.
Should his team have lost Game 3 to make it a 3-0 hole, that would have absolutely been panic mode.
The longtime Winnipeg Jets bench boss is in just the second Final appearance of his lengthy coaching career (2002 with Carolina).
Taking on the Vegas Golden Knights, Maurice's Panthers finally showed up to play on Thursday. Led by strong goaltending from backstop Sergei Bobrovsky, who stopped 25 of the 27 shots he faced, the Cats clawed back to tie the game late on another heroic effort from Matthew Tkachuk.
"Everybody will probably say how they were leading most of the game, which they were, but at the end of the day nobody cares how we got here," Tkachuk reflected. "It's a 2-1 series. We came into this game to just win one game and we did that."
All they needed after that was a penalty kill in overtime and a game-winner. Easy peasy, right? Well, for Florida, it was a matter of simply saying no more.
Carter Verhaeghe potted his fourth overtime winner, while the Panthers improved to 7-0 in extra time this postseason.
"Over the course of his career he's gotten the puck off his stick faster than somebody can react to it," Maurice said of Verhaeghe's winner. "So, you get to overtime, nobody is beefing you for a better play, 'I'm wide open, why didn't you hit me?' Just shoot the [darn] puck."
Entering the game down 2-0 in the series and trailing 2-1 in the game through 57 minutes, it was another goalmouth scramble that led to Tkachuk's game-tying tally.
"Give them credit, they stuck around, they found a goal at the end in overtime," said Vegas forward Jack Eichel. "Obviously, you don't want to blow a lead when you're up a goal with two minutes left, but it's all part of it. I mean, nobody said it was going to be easy."
Adin Hill made 20 stops, while none other than Mark Stone and Jonathan Marchessault potted the tallies for Vegas in a losing effort.
And it was brand-new father Brandon Montour who got the Panthers on the board early, scoring his first goal in what seemed like forever to open the scoring on Thursday.
"I feel like the last little bit I obviously haven't put it in the net, but I'm creating chances, making plays," Montour said. "It just wasn't getting in. It's nice to get that one and see that one go in, and that's for my baby boy."
Now, for Maurice and Co., the challenge will be to replicate that effort in Game 4 on Saturday. With just one day off between contests, the two teams will look to pick things up where they left them on Thursday night at FLA Live Arena.
Should Maurice's Panthers get the win and knot the series up at twos, it would officially be the most playoff victories he has ever recorded in a single postseason, as his 2002 Hurricanes managed just one win in their series loss to the Cup champion Detroit.
Saturday's game will get underway from Florida at 7:00 PM central time. It can be viewed live on Sportsnet in Canada and TNT in the United States.