A couple of heroes emerge in time

Reinhart, Verhaeghe net biggest Panthers goals in 26 years

If the Panthers go on to skate deep into this NHL spring, circle Monday night and put a star by the names of Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe for their season-saving goals. Give general manager Bill Zito an assist on the official score sheet too.

Most of all, take a deep breath and count your blessings as this tied series moves back to Sunrise for Wednesday’s Game 5 that this franchise’s 25-year skate through the desert didn’t add effectively a 26th year Monday.

The Panthers threw around words like “resilience,” and “grit,” to explain their late comeback and 3-2 overtime win over the Washington Capitals. And that’s fine. To the victor goes the vocabulary. Here’s another word: Whew. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of that win or the relief mixing with the joy afterward.

Full transparency: About the time interim coach Andrew Brunette considered pulling goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with four minutes left and the Panthers trailing, 2-1, I considered the list of worst choke jobs in South Florida sports history. It was an undertaker’s task in a night calling for that.

There was LeBron James disappearing in the 2011 NBA Finals in a manner that he didn’t come out of his house for two weeks afterward and, even then, was so distraught he looked like a “homeless man,’’ Heat president Pat Riley said.

There was the 1992 Dolphins who led San Diego 21-6 at halftime of their second-round playoff game and lost, 22-21, in Don Shula’s last shot. There was the University of Miami’s 1987 national championship game where they produced triple the yardage against Penn State but were undone by seven turnovers.

That’s the malodorous territory the Panthers flirted with late in a solid Game 4 after calling themselves “nervous” the first three games. A loss would have the league’s best regular-season team facing an embarrassing exit and extend the franchise’s drought of 26 years without a playoff series win.

Brunette didn’t pull Bobrovsky just then.

“Thank God, I didn’t,’’ he said.

Bobrovsky made one final and crucial save on Washington’s Marcus Johansson. That’s something to remember, something that says how random sports can be even at the highest levels.

“I don’t know anything,’’ Brunette said afterward, smiling. “You take a chance and it worked out.”

Bobrovsky was pulled with just over three minutes to go. A lengthof-the-ice by Washington’s Garnet Hathaway slid into the left post rather than the net.

“A game of inches,’’ Verhaeghe said.

Suddenly, something didn’t just happen from there. Everything did for the Panthers.

They got the franchise’s two biggest goals in more than a quarter-century in context and consequence — each with an assist from Zito.

First came Reinhart’s tying goal from out front of stubborn Washington goalie Ilya Samsonov with 2:04 left in regulation. The Panthers had double the shots of Washington and controlled much of the play. The night still looked to be slipping away until Reinhart’s shot.

“This was our best effort,’ he said of Game 4. “It looked like our team.”

Then, just under five minutes into overtime, Verhaeghe scored just as big a goal. Bigger? You decide. He took a long rebound and put one it the top corner of the net to tie this series and silence Washington’s crowd.

“One shot in overtime,’’ said Verhaeghe, who also scored the Panthers’ opening goal. “Lucky we got that shot first.”

Lucky? Well, this franchise could use some. What it really used was smarts. Reinhart was the No. 2 pick in the draft in 2014 by Buffalo. He played six years there, never making the playoffs.

By the end of his time in Buffalo, something went wrong between him and the team, and Zito plucked him a first-round pick. Reinhart’s game-tying score was the first playoff goal of his career.

And Verhaeghe? His pro career effectively started in 2015 with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey League. He played the next season for the Missouri Mavericks of the ECHL. Then the Syracuse Crunch for a couple of years.

So you see he came up a hard way. Even when called up to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019 — his first NHL game was against the Panthers — they were so stacked with Stanley Cup-winning talent he didn’t have much of a role.

That’s how Zito traded for him. It’s how Verhaeghe made the kind of game-winning play that can change playoff fortunes.

“All series we’ve been kind of struggling with some stuff,’’ Verhaeghe said. “Finally, I think it was our best game of the series.”

Winning is a perfume that covers problems. The Panthers are 0-13 on power players. That’s a problem. The Panthers best players, Aleksander Barkov, Claude Giroux and Jonathan Huberdeau, haven’t impacted the play much so far, either. That’s a problem. One of their top and tough forwards, Sam Bennett, was bloodied on what appeared to be a penalty-worthy hit by Washington’s T.J. Oshie. Play went the other way, and Washington scored a go-ahead goal. That could have been a problem.

None of that matters now. The Panthers found some heroes of their own this night, ones 26 years in the waiting. They come home Wednesday for Game 5.

The series is even. This ridiculous drought without winning a playoff series has a good chance to fall.

There’s just one word for the dramatic way it played out. Whew.