Panthers sweep Canes, go from last into the playoffs to first Stanley Cup Final since 1996

The Florida Panthers waited nearly 27 years for a day like Wednesday to come. After a generation of dysfunction and futility, they arrived on the doorstep of the Stanley Cup Final, a win away from making the championship series for the first time in their third season of existence and made their fans wait until the very last moment to finally exhale.

Matthew Tkachuk scored a game-winning power-play goal with 4.3 seconds left, and the Panthers beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-3, to sweep the Eastern Conference finals. Florida is going back to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1996.

The Panthers, who didn’t even qualify for the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs until the final week of the regular season, never trailed in the last two games of the East finals on the way to a 4-0 series win, although they didn’t make the finale easy.

Florida blew a two-goal first period lead, then another one-goal lead in the third period when the Hurricanes scored a game-tying goal 3:22 left. The Panthers drew a penalty with 57 seconds left and finally cashed in just before overtime to win the Eastern Conference.

They’re the first No. 8 seed to reach the championship since the Predators got to the 2017 Stanley Cup Final and the fifth since 2006, and they did it by knocking off three of the four best regular-season teams in the NHL and their last two series victories were overwhelming.

With rats and a sweep, Florida Panthers are in the Stanley Cup Final for first time since 1996 | Opinion

They beat the Bruins, who set regular-season records for wins and points, in seven games after losing 3 of 4 to start Round 1, then pummeled the Maple Leafs in five in Round 2 and swept Carolina out of Round 3 in less than a week. They’ve won 11 of 12 since they fell to the brink of elimination in the opening round.

Anthony Duclair’s goal, off assists from All-Star center Aleksander Barkov and left wing Carter Verhaeghe, let the Panthers play ahead for all of nearly all Game 4, and a power-play goal by superstar right wing Tkachuk with 9:27 left in the first period gave them a 2-0 edge and the first multi-goal lead of the series for either team.

After the Hurricanes responded with back-to-back goals in the first and second periods to tie the score at 2-2, left wing Ryan Lomberg scored with 10:11 left in the second — on a spectacular play by the fourth line — to put Florida ahead for good.

Less than seven minutes after Carolina tied the score on a goal by star winger Teuvo Teravainen, Lomberg shrugged off a hit to carry the puck into the offensive zone and centered a pass to six-time All-Star center Eric Staal, who then whirled and sent another pass across the front of the goal to Colin White. Star goaltender Frederik Andersen slid to cut off White’s angle and the forward tapped one more pass back to Lomberg, who scored a go-ahead goal.

There never could have been a hero other than Tkachuk, though, and a gorgeous passing play got him alone on the doorstep to score with 4.3 seconds to spare. He dropped to his knees and pumped his fist as rubber rats covered the ice, a nod to 1996.

It was an incredible ending to an incredible run. Any single part of it would have been unbelievable, let alone when taken all together.

The Panthers were the last team into the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, stuck as the No. 8 seed supposed doormat for Boston. They spent a week on the brink of elimination after losing to the Presidents’ Trophy winner twice in Sunrise and were down by a goal in the final minute of Game 7, only to tie the score with seconds remaining and then stun the Bruins in overtime in Boston.

Even after they got out of first round, they drew Toronto in the second and Carolina in the third. So far in the Cup playoffs, Florida has beaten the team with the most, second most and fourth most points in the regular season.

All of the Panthers’ last 12 games have been decided by two goals or fewer, too. Six of their 11 wins took overtime, including their quadruple-overtime victory in Game 1 of the ECF last week, and six required comebacks. Although Florida is the first team into the Stanley Cup Final, the Panthers have only outscored their opponents by seven goals in these playoffs — less than half a goal per game.

This doesn’t even include any of Florida’s ignominious history: The Panthers went to the Finals for the first time in 1996 and then went a quarter of a century without winning another postseason series until they finally broke through to the second round last year, only to get swept by the rival Lightning once they got there. In 29 seasons, Florida has been to the playoffs just nine times and four of those have come in the past four years — and one of those appearances only happened after the NHL expanded the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs to 22 teams because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maybe nothing about this run is more unlikely than the Panthers’ biggest postseason hero: Sergei Bobrovsky signed a seven-year, $70 million deal with the Panthers in 2019 to make him the highest paid goalie in the NHL and it immediately looked like one of the worst contracts in the league. He had a meager .902 save percentage in his first two seasons in South Florida, got benched during the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, rebounded a little bit during the 2021-22 NHL season at then didn’t even start at the beginning of these payoffs, with the Panthers opting instead for goaltender Alex Lyon, who, at 30, had only played 39 games in the NHL.

Barely a month later, the 34-year-old Russian manned his crease to near perfection while 20,065 fans serenaded him with chants of, “Bobby! Bobby!” After he backstopped Florida to three straight wins to rally the Panthers past the Bruins, he stopped 164 of 174 shots from the Maple Leafs and then 168 of 174 from the Hurricanes in the conference finals. His save percentage is the best in the playoffs among goalies to play at least 10 games.

He is not the only reason Florida has made it to brink of a Cup, though. Four years ago, the Panthers were stuck in a four-year drought without a postseason appearance — not expanded those 2020 Cup playoffs — and had put together only one 100-point season in their history, so they fired longtime general manager Dale Tallon, brought in Bill Zito as his replaced and asked their new general manager to completely reshape the organization.

In his first year, Zito brought in 10 new everyday contributors and Florida played at a 115-point pace. In Zito’s second season, the Panthers won the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time, only to again fail to win even a single game in the second round of the playoffs. The GM’s third offseason was his most ambitious yet.

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Andrew Brunette, who was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as an interim coach, was gone and coach Paul Maurice — with more losses than any other coach in NHL history — came in to try to implement a more defensive-minded, postseason-ready system. Star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar and star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau, who was the franchise’s all-time leader scorer at the time, were gone, shipped to the Flames in exchange for Tkachuk.

For a long time, the bold moves appeared destined to flop, at least in Year 1. Florida was nine points out of a playoff spot after Christmas and three out with eight games left in its regular season, only for a six-game winning streak — all with Lyon in net — to vault them into the playoffs with one game to spare.