COMEBACK CATS ROAR BACK AGAIN
Verhaeghe creating magic for Panthers
His name is Carter Verhaeghe. His teammates call him Swaggy. He just earned himself a piece of South Florida sports legend and lore. He just scored the Florida Panthers’ biggest goal since 1996 — make that goals — and saved a magic season from probably ending way too soon.
Verhaeghe scored two goals Wednesday night in Game 5 including the game winner as the Panthers rallied from three down to stun the Washington Capitals 5-3 and take a 3-2 lead in this best-of-7 NHL first round playoff series.
He also had two assists.
Two nights after he also had the Cats’ winning goal in overtime.
He is the mayor of Sunrise by acclimation. At least for this week.
Now the Comeback Cats will return to D.C. for Friday’s Game 6 able to win the series on road ice, or return home for a decisive Game 7 on Sunday.
Neither seemed likely late in Monday’s game or for much of Wednesday’s, until Verhaeghe led the charge.
The Panthers Claude Giroux tried to tell us.
“It’s the playoffs,” he’d said before Game 5 Wednesday night. “It’s stressful, it’s exciting. A lot of emotions going on. We’re enjoying it right now. That’s why we play the game.”
He meant the previous game, when the Panthers trailed late, on the edge of falling into a deep 3-1 hole to Washington, the Cats’ magic season in grave peril. That was the stress. Then
For the second time in three days, the Panthers were all but dead, stuck in a precarious hole and in need of a thrilling comeback to avoid falling to the brink of first-round elimination.
Of course, comebacks are what they do best and their most important one yet now has them on the verge of reaching the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs after a 5-3 win against the Washington Capitals in a pivotal Game 5 on Wednesday in Sunrise.
The Panthers were down 3-0 with less than 34 minutes left and then they roared back to life. Their three-goal deficit was gone in 7:51 and forward Carter Verhaeghe finally delivered them a 3-2 series lead when he beat Capitals goaltender Ilya Samsonov for a game-winning goal with 16:56 left.
Florida has not won a postseason series since it went to the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs in just its third year of existence and hadn’t even led a series since 2012. Now the
Panthers are one win away and can clinch their spot in the Eastern Conference semifinals Friday when they head to Washington for Game 6.
Fittingly, it would take a comeback in the series, too. Florida lost Game 1 and two of the first three, and were 2:04 away from a near-insurmountable series deficit Monday at Capital One Arena before forward Sam Reinhart scored with the goalie pulled to force overtime. Verhaeghe scored a few minutes into the extra period to knot the series at 2-2
and swing the advantage back to the Panthers, who would get to play two of the final three games in the series back at home, if necessary.
On Wednesday, Florida once again packed FLA Live Arena and the crowd was ready for a comeback because of how often they saw them all year. In the regular season, the Panthers tied an NHL record with 29 come-frombehind victories, set a league record with five comebacks of three goals or more and became only the third team in history to come back from multiple four-goal deficits in
The Panthers were down 3-0 with less than 34 minutes left, but erased the Capitals lead in just 7:51 to take a 3-2 lead in their first-round series.
came the late tying goal then the overtime winner. That was the excitement. The enjoyment.
Then came Game 5.
The stress was just getting started.
The rest of it, too.
In a teetering 2-2 series, the Panthers fell behind 3-0, the home crowd numb. It seemed Florida would be headed back up to D.C. for a must-win Friday.
But wait. Have you not watched this Panthers team?
The highest-scoring team in hockey came to life.
As quickly as the Panthers had fallen down by three, it would soon be
3-3.
Cats made it 3-1 on Verhaeghe’s fourth goal of this series on service from Aleksander Barkov and Giroux.
It was 3-2, the crowd as loud as it had been all night, when Verhaeghe collected a loose puck in the neutral zone and sent a gorgeous pass that hit Patric Hornqvist in stride. May a Tua Tagovailoa deep pass to Tyreek Hill be as perfect. Hornqvist was 1-on-1 with the goalie. And won.
Then the crowd got even louder.
Suddenly a three-goal deficit was erased and it was tied late in the second period with Sam Reinhart’s wraparound goal off a shot by the omnipresent Verhaeghe.
Then it was 4-3. Verhaeghe, again, on a perfect cross-pass from Barkov.
Special teams again hurt Florida.
Throughout this series and including the start of Game 5, the Cats’ power play has been powerless, while Florida’s penalty kill ... hasn’t, at least not enough.
Washington’s early goal, 7:09 in, came on a power play when nemesis T.J. Oshie slapped a shot through traffic at the home net. It was the Caps’ sixth power play goal in 18 tries this series, not the penalty-kill percentage Florida would like.
By contrast, the Panthers failed in two man advantages to make the horn sound in the first period, and on one later, making Florida an unfathomable 0-for-16 on the power play this series.
Even with that, after a pair of miracle comebacks in a row, Florida is in command.
Throughout NHL history (in 115 instances), teams that have won Game 4 on the road to make it 2-2 go on to win the series and advance 56.5 percent of the time.
Game 5 trends are more telling, if you believe in such barometers.
Teams that win the pivotal game to go up 3-2 (in 420 instances) go on to win the series at a 79.1 percent clip. It nudges up to 80.7 percent when the Game 5 win came at home.
Wednesday felt like the biggest Panthers home game since magic run to the 1996 Stanley Cup Final.
But the Cinderella Cats came home down 2-0 in that Final. The bigger game may have been the
Game 6 home win over Pittsburgh on May 30, ‘96 that created the Game 7 Florida then won on the road to reach the Final..
The stakes and expectations are higher 26 years later.
The ‘96 Panthers are were just happy to be there, where no one thought they’d be.
These Cats dominated, had the best regular season record in the NHL and scored the most goals of any team in, coincidentally, 26 seasons.
Wednesday also completed the first back-toback home Game 5s in the Heat and Panthers’ shared history.
The basketball team took care of business with a huge rout of Philadelphia on Tuesday.
One night later, it was no rout. It was a triumph even more impressive.
‘‘We’ve shown our resilience all season long,” said coach Andrew Brunette.
Said Verhaeghe: “We know we have another level to get to.”