Panthers recapturing their comeback magic to fight back into playoff race
When their comeback was complete and a twogoal deficit had turned into a third-period lead in all of 150 seconds, the Florida Panthers could feel it was going to stay that way and so Matthew Tkachuk couldn’t help but lose it.
He spun around and dropped to one knee, and pumped his fist and listened to the FLA Live Arena crowd roar while his teammates mobbed him. It was an unbridled eruption of joy unlike any he’d had in this often frustrating, suddenly thrilling season in Sunrise.
“That was probably the most excited I’ve been this year after one of my goals,” the All-Star right wing admitted Saturday. “I’m happy that one went in.”
All of 2:30 earlier, the Panthers were down by two goals and then, in the time of minutes-long explosion they often made routine last year when they set an NHL record for comeback wins, they stormed back to take the lead with three rapid-fire goals. All-Star center Aleksander Barkov scored first, forward Sam Reinhart added another less than a minute later, and Tkachuk finally punctuated the comeback with a gorgeous display of stick work and touch around the net to finally give Florida the lead on the New Jersey Devils in its 4-2 win.
For the fourth straight game, the Panthers fell behind early only to at least tie the game. In three, they completed the comeback. In the other, they still secured a point before losing in overtime. It all let Florida win 5 of 7 on its longest homestand of the season — with an overtime
loss mixed in to give the Panthers points in 6 of 7 — and climb back within a point of the second wild card with 13 games left in the regular season.
Florida (35-27-7) could be back in a postseason spot as soon as Monday, with a win against the Detroit Red Wings (3029-9) at 7 p.m. at Little Caesars Arena in Michigan coupled with a Penguins loss to the Senators, and is now favored to reach the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, according to FiveThirtyEight. A newfound penchant for comebacks — or, rather, perhaps a return to form — have fueled this season-long turnaround.
As recently as 10 days ago, the Panthers were down in the cellar in most comeback categories, with their total number of come-from-behind wins stuck in the single digits and only one multi-goal comeback of any kind.
On March 10, they finally pulled off another, rallying from two down to beat the Blackhawks in overtime, and they followed it up by erasing a two-goal deficit to force overtime against the Jets on March 11 and then routing the Canadiens on Thursday despite falling behind in
just 16 seconds.
Their come-from-behind win Saturday was their most impressive yet. The Devils are a Stanley Cup contender and led 2-0 with less than 14 minutes remaining and yet Florida never panicked, even when its 19-shot first period went unrewarded and it wound up trailing off two strange goals in the second.
“We play a much better hockey game now,” coach Paul Maurice said Saturday. “There’s just more confidence in it. Early in the year when we would get behind, we would open our game up and we would trade back and forth. We didn’t trade in the third period at all.”
The change starts there. Early in the year, the Panthers would fall behind and — especially when down by two — they were usually hopeless.
At the time, they were caught between two identities — their wide-open, end-to-end style of last year and Maurice’s more structured, methodical approach this season — and they tried to revert back to their old one when they got down. There was no cohesiveness and not enough trust in the game plan.
“When times are tough, when we’re down, we seem to be pretty calm right now,” Tkachuk said. “At the beginning [of the season if] it wasn’t going our way, maybe gripping the sticks a little bit too much and maybe changing the way, but we kind of just stuck to it.”
There was also some component of bad luck because there always is when some probably unsustainable trend takes hold. Some of the karma is now swinging in favor of the Panthers, who scored their first goal Saturday after a puck bounced off defenseman Marc Staal’s head and to Barkov’s stick.
“It’s nice to get like a bounce,” Tkachuk said.
The final piece to the comeback was one major change Maurice made in the middle of the game and the way his players responded to it.
After a dominant first period gave way to a more evenly matched second, the Panthers bumped Reinhart up to the top line and sent right wing Anthony Duclair down to the third.
In the final period, Barkov and Reinhart combined for three goals, although one was on a power play, and the revamped third line took on an identity as the fastest on the ice with Duclair and Ryan Lomberg on the wings.
“No matter who you’re going out with, everyone seems to be bought into our systems, our structure, the way we’ve got to play,” Reinhart said Saturday. “On a night like tonight, it doesn’t really matter who’s up. We’re all trying to hold on at the end and we’re able to pull out the two points, which is critical for us now.”