Hyde: Panthers need a repeat win
To be meaningful, Panthers must repeat performance twice
The final buzzer sounded, the Florida Panthers celebrated on the ice and Sergei Bobrovsky, the star of their series, then smiled Wednesday afternoon across Zoom from his seat in a Toronto news conference.
“It’s so much fun to be part of this winning experience,” said the Panthers goalie after a 3-2 win in Game 3 of their playoff series against the New York
Islanders.
Seldom has so modest a win felt so important.
The season stayed alive for now. That’s all Wednesday meant. They weren’t swept into summer. That’s the reward as the Panthers cut the Islanders’ series lead to two games to one.
Now the Panthers can show Wednesday’s play wasn’t illusion
or delusion by playing the same way in Friday’s Game 4. And then, if successful, again in Game 5. Can they? Will they?
There was a stretch there in Wednesday’s third period, when the Panthers got two quick goals from Mike Hoffman and Brian Boyle to take command, when Aleksander Barkov had another nice chance and Bobrovsky made a timely save, that you wondered why they haven’t played more like this.
Then when you factored in Erik Haula’s goal and sprawling block of an Islanders power-play shot — one that got a hug from defenseman Aaron Ekblad back on the bench — you asked the next question: Why can’t they keep playing like this?
“Everyone had a part in it,” Boyle said afterward.
That was right. Everyone did— first line, third line, stars such as Bobrovsky and
Hoffman, who now has four points in the three games and no-names such as Haula, who was scratched the first two games but had the first goal and that timely block.
The coach, Joel Quenneville, put Haula and four others in the lineup, shaking everything and perhaps everyone up. Or maybe the changes were just because the Panthers had to play back-to-back days and players’ conditioning isn’t
there yet.
Either way, the Panthers finally played a game Quenneville wanted: a simple game, a system game.
“I think we got some lessons over the course of the season of playing a run-and-gun game,” he said. “Let’s play a simple game, let’s just chip [the puck], move it and play around each other more.”
It’s Quenneville’s job to talk his players into believing that, and playing like that, and maybe it takes hold after a win like that. But if it was as simple as all
that it wouldn’t take until the third playoff game for it to hit home.
The Islanders, up 2-0 in the series, were due to relax just a bit, just enough, just as coach Barry Trotz said after the game. The Panthers had five power plays Wednesday — more than they had in the first two games combined. Two of their goals came during them.
“Too many men on the ice,” Trotz said afterward, spitting out the cause of one penalty. “That one’s inexcusable.”
How it all happened is
easier to explain than what it all means for the next game. And without that game this one by the Panthers means little.
“We’re putting the work in and it’s good to see that rewarded,” Boyle said. “We can only control today, and we did.”
They did well too. “We played hard in a do-or-die situation,” Ekblad said. “We worked hard and we’re pretty happy.”
Now they have the Islanders’ attention. Now comes the harder task.
“We know we can play like that,” so now comes the harder task. Now they have to do it all again, and then again, for any of these smiles to mean anything.
Disappointment is more a destination for this franchise over the past two decades than an emotion. We’ll see if this year is different in the way it was promised to be when so much money was spent and so many newcomers signed.
Their reward for Wednesday’s win was getting the chance to do it again Friday. That’s as far as you can take things for now.