RALEIGH, N.C. — It was a muted celebration for the Florida Panthers, considering the outcome — a 4-1 series win over the Carolina Hurricanes that stamped their ticket to a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final.
But as Matthew Tkachuk said after it was over and the game was sealed on linemate Sam Bennett’s empty-net goal to make it 5-3, “It’s all business, and we’ve got a bigger goal in mind.”
The Panthers never let emotions get the best of them.
Not after Monday’s 3-0 loss on home ice extended this series. Not even after falling down 2-0 in Wednesday’s first period, which featured the Hurricanes at their most dominant.
It’s just not in their DNA.
Why?
“Experience,” said Evan Rodrigues, who scored his first goal of the playoffs to tie the game 2-2 just 30 seconds after Tkachuk put the Panthers on the board. “It was from before I got here, from the year they went to the finals against Vegas (2023), and last year, obviously. The message was always, ‘They’re going to have their push, they’re going to have their 10 minutes. They get paid, too. They’re a good team. They know how to play hockey.’
“When those times come, you’ve got to weather it, you’ve got to get through it. You can’t let the crowd dictate the game. We’ve got to stick to our game, stay tight, stay together. And just going through it so many times, even if I’ve only been here two years — a lot of guys three — gives you that extra calm. I think that’s what we kind of built off of.”
Over, and over, and over again.
That repetition breeds champions.
Before the Panthers lost Game 4, we asked several of them what goes into winning at this time of year.
Aaron Ekblad’s words resonated the moment he responded with them, and once again when the series came to a close at Lenovo Center.
“It’s trust in your game, I think, in any situation,” Ekblad said. “Down 2-0 in a series, down 2-0 in a game or up 4-1, it’s an unwavering commitment to playing the game that we play. You can’t change things for every situation. You can’t change your game. And the little details are extremely important; getting that puck over the blue line from your zone so that they have to dump it back in, putting it in deep every single time. It’s really important.”
It is the thing the Hurricanes couldn’t do through the first three games of this series, despite doing it so well to establish a 47-30-5 record in the regular season before beating the 111-point Washington Capitals in five games and the 91-point New Jersey Devils in five.
They came undone early and only found some semblance of their game when it was too late. It took them 12 periods to play their best one, and many of them were spent straying from the style of game that brought them success.
It was a repeat performance from conference finals gone by, leaving the Hurricanes a longer summer than they’d planned for to figure out what it’ll take for them to get over the hump finally.
“There is another level,” said coach Rod Brind’Amour. “I mean, we came off a real hard series, physical series, and then, all of a sudden, it went another level, and it took us a little time to kind of adapt to it. And I thought we did. I thought we were good. It’s just, you can’t give these guys a 3-0 lead and expect to come back. That’s a big hole.”
The Panthers deserve their credit for digging it, then sending the Hurricanes spiralling into it.
Through the experience Rodrigues referenced, they learned how to win.
“Things that we have talked about in our room is: The game doesn’t care who you are, it doesn’t care what style of game you play, doesn’t care how much talent you have, doesn’t care how you feel, doesn’t care about what you’ve been through. There’s a set of things that it demands, and it’s not perfect, but if you are the team that does the things the game demands of you, you have a better chance of winning,” said coach Paul Maurice prior to Game 4.
He talked about there being mitigating factors, and we thought about them.
The opposing goaltender comes up with a steal, officials make calls you disagree with, a stick breaks at the wrong time, a skate blade falls off, and sometimes the Hockey Gods just go against you.
But on the over, consistently doing what the game demands of you in any given moment opens the door to the result falling in your favour.
“The team that plays the hardest usually wins,” Maurice added. “Not always, but that’s a pretty good bet.”
But the best bet is on the team that most often follows the unwritten rules of the game.
As Maurice put it, “The team that makes the best decisions most likely wins. So that’s not dump the puck every time, that’s dump the puck when you should and make a play when you should.
“Easy from the bench. Really easy on TV. Very, very difficult at ice level at that speed.”
Unless you’re Aleksander Barkov.
Oh sure, the Panthers’ captain and most-gifted offensive player bobbled two pucks in the slot during Game 5.
But when that vulcanized rubber found his stick late in the third period, roughly four minutes after Seth Jarvis tied the game 3-3, he made magic with it, finding Carter Verhaeghe for what proved to be the winning goal.
“Great goal, huge goal, Eastern Conference-winning goal,” said Tkachuk.
On the resolve Barkov showed to create it, Rodrigues said, “It’s just who he is as a person.”
“He doesn’t get too high, doesn’t get too low. His emotion level is always even-keeled,” Rodrigues explained. “So, when there’s a stressful environment or a high-emotion environment, he’s able to play his game, stick with his game, and just do the right thing over and over and over again, and his skill just kind of takes over. You never see him force anything. You never see him try anything dangerous. He’s just all-world, all skill, all talent, and it just comes out.”
Sounds like the Panthers as a whole, from Barkov to Sergei Bobrovsky, who played outstanding after allowing the first two goals of the game. Their composure level is unmatched — before, during, and even after the game.
“It’s not our first rodeo with this,” said Tkachuk.
It’s their third, making them the ninth franchise in NHL history to make it to the final series as many times in a row.
The Tampa Bay Lightning (in 2020, 2021 and 2022) are the only other team to do it in the last 40 years.
Not that the Panthers are popping champagne yet.
“When you do it a couple of times, you understand you’re three-quarters of the way through and there’s lots more that has to happen,” said Maurice.
He said he would enjoy this win on this night, and said it in such a measured tone.
It matched what we saw from the Panthers after the game.
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