Suddenly, Cats find success!
26 years of frustration finally are in the past
It was the time of Bill Clinton, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls. Seinfeld was still going strong on TV. “Independence Day” was dominating at the box office, and we were dancing to “Macarena” on the radio. Dan Marino was still gunslinging for the Dolphins.
It was 1996 when the Florida Panthers last won an NHL playoff series.
They did again Friday night — Friday the 13th turned lucky. The word finally has seldom been more aptly applied. Twenty-six years of frustration did not just disappear, but at least were put in the past tense at last. After six previous first-round failures since reaching the ’96 Stanley Cup Finals, the Panthers are moving on in the playoffs instead of watching them on TV.
This ends the longest drought of playoff series wins in NHL history.
So it figures it stretched into overtime Friday to do it.
The Comeback Cats rallied from a goal down, twice, in a 4-3 OT victory over the Washington Capitals in D.C., a Game 6 victory that eliminated Caps and left Florida in a very unaccustomed place:
Waiting for its second-round opponent.
The Panthers, moving ahead, will next face the winner of Saturday night’s Game 7 between the rival Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Florida’s winning goal in extra time:
Carter Verhaeghe wheeled his arm into a fist pump and, suddenly, two-and-a-half decades of frustration for the Florida Panthers were over.
The forward — the hero of this series and a game-time decision Friday — scored with 2:46 gone in sudden-death overtime as the Panthers beat the Washington Capitals, 4-3, to win the series 4-2.
The drought is over. Florida is going to the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs.
It might not sound like much, but it’s a moment
South Florida has waited 26 years to see.
When the Panthers last won a postseason series, All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau was 2, star center Aleksander Barkov hadn’t yet celebrated his first birthday and star defenseman Aaron Ekblad wasn’t even four months old.
Interim coach Andrew Brunette was still mostly toiling in the American Hockey League — he played his first 11 NHL games for the Capitals in 1996 — and general manager Bill Zito had just decided to move from a legal career to work as an agent.
Florida reached the Cup playoffs six more times between then and now, and bowed out in the first round every time. Huberdeau, Barkov and Ekblad — drafted in the top three in three consecutive NHL Entry Drafts from 2012-2014 — never even got one of those ill-fated firstround series to seven games.
Until Friday, nearly a decade of those three stars yielded nothing more than a few All-Star appearances, a handful
of good regular seasons and a series of — quite frankly — unimpressive franchise records.
Finally, they’re moving on. All it took was the best team in franchise history, an alltime great offense and, of course, some comebacks.
After winning the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time and averaging more than four goals per game in the regular season, the Panthers quickly slipped to the verge of a collapse. They lost the first and third games in the series, and were 2:04 away from losing Game 4 before Florida scored with its goaltender
The Panthers erased a pair of one-goal deficits and regrouped after a late collapse to beat the Capitals in sudden-death overtime, advancing in the playoffs for the first time since 1996 — ending the longest drought in NHL history.
Carter Verhaeghe. Or did that go without saying?
He’d scored four goals in thee previous two games including two game winners.
He was questionable to play Friday with an injury and was quiet — until he scored the biggest franchise goal in 26 years.
The Comeback Cats rallied from 1-0 and 2-1 deficits and two ties to win.
After a tense scoreless first period the Capitals struck first 3:44 into the second on a Nic Dowd shot that caromed off the upper-right goalpost and down — put back in by Dowd before Sergei Bobrovsky could find the puck.
The Cats weren’t down long.
Florida went level at 1-1 6:13 into the second period on a Ryan Lomberg finish
off a sequence initiated by Aaron Ekblad. Lomberg had seen very limited ice time before this in the series — but was there for the crucial, needed spark.
“First period they had a
little bit better of the play and the second we got to our game,” Panthers coach Andrew Brunette said on TBS midgame.
The third was not as kind for Florida.
Just 1:37 in, a Nicklas Backstrom slapshot beat Bobrovsky for the 2-1 margin.
But — never discount the Comeback Cats — Florida tied it 2-2 mid-third when the veteran Claude Giroux, such a smart add for the Cats, slid the puck between the legs of goalie Ilya Samsonov on service from Aaron Ekblad.
Then came Barkov. The Panthers’ best player, captain Aleksander Barkov, made it 3-2 on an in-close deposit of a gorgeous cross pass from Giroux with 5:43 to play in regulation.
That was before the Capitals tied it 3-3 with 1:01 left in regulation — 61 seconds — when nemesis T.J. Oshie solved heavy traffic at the Cats’ net.
The frantic OT finish for a Game 6 road win avoided what would have been the 15th Game 7 in the combined history of the Panthers, Marlins and Heat, and the 11th at home (the first since the Heat in May 2016).
The hockey team has had only two of those Game 7s: a 1996 win in Pittsburgh in the Eastern finals, and a 2012 home loss to New Jersey in the first round.
It seemed headed to a third Game 7 in club history much of Friday night but the Panthers did what they do.
Down 2-1 in this series, in the past three games, all wins, the Cats have done this:
Scored the tying goal with two minutes left and then won in overtime.
Overcome a 3-0 deficit and won 5-3.
And Friday, rallied from 1-0 and 2-1 down and a couple of ties to win on the road.
The Florida Panthers were the best and highestscoring team in hockey this NHL season, but with a history that makes them still seem like underdogs.
Well, the proving goes on.
But that’s the thing.
For the first time since 1996, it does not end with the regular season or in the the playoffs’ first round.
It goes on.