Panthers refuse to let fat lady sing
Bobrovsky gets hot to prevent series sweep by Islanders
Aleksander Barkov was born in Finland, but his parents were born in Russia, so the big centre grew up fluent in both languages. He only learned English when he arrived in Florida as an NHL rookie in 2013.
Sometimes, it shows. Twenty-four hours before the Panthers’ biggest win of the year, Barkov was asked if he was disappointed that his team had begun the playoffs with consecutive losses to the New York Islanders. After all, the stats say that trailing 2-0 in a best-of-five series might as well be a death wish. Only once — out of 57 attempts — has a team come back and won the series.
Barkov knew this. But he also knew that there was an English phrase that summed up how he felt about possibly packing it in.
“If I’m disappointed being here? No,” said Barkov. “This is a great chance for us. I’ve seen so many teams coming back from 3-0, 2-0, 3-1. It’s not over until … ”
As Barkov paused, trying to remember how the rest of the phrase went, his teammate completed the thought.
“The fat lady sings,” said Keith Yandle, smiling.
The Panthers, who hung on for a 3-2 win against the Islanders in Game 3, didn’t hear the fat lady on Wednesday. But in a shortened series where alarm bells tend to go off with each and every loss, everyone is aware that her vocal cords are primed and ready.
“I’d say we’re trying not to get too high or too low,” said Panthers defenceman Aaron Ekblad. “Obviously going down 2-0 is heartbreaking at times, but at the end of the day, we’re going to take it one game at a time … and control things as much as we can and move forward. That’s the only way. You can’t really dwell on what happened those first two games. You have to move forward and we did tonight in a big way.”
Based on history, they might have simply been delaying the inevitable. But in a 24-team expanded playoffs that comes on the heels of a four-month layoff where all the games are played in empty arenas with no travel and no fans and outside pressure, does history even matter anymore?
Fans were writing off the Oilers after they lost in Game 1, only to jump back on the bandwagon after Connor Mcdavid scored a hat trick in Game 2. After Toronto’s stars failed to score in Game 1, there was fear they would never score again. They did.
Maybe that’s why Barkov seemed so unconcerned about being down 2-0. This isn’t a seven-game series. As easy as it is to go down 2-0 … and then get eliminated, as the Rangers did on Tuesday, it’s just as easy to win two straight and make it a series.
On Wednesday, Panthers coach Joel Quenneville scratched five players to give his team a fresh look, if not some fresh legs. The latter was certainly noticeable in the third period, when Florida seemed to have an extra jump.
The one area where Quenneville didn’t tinker was in net, where two-time Vezina Trophy winner Sergei Bobrovsky, who signed a seven-year, Us$70-million contract last summer, finally showed why he’s the second-highest paid goalie in the league. He finally won a game for the Panthers.
We’ve seen this before from Bobrovsky. A year ago in Columbus, he got hot and helped the eighth-place Blue Jackets sweep the first-place Lightning.
Maybe this is the start of another hot streak.