Overtime. Season, for all intent and purposes on the line. The Florida Panthers keep finding ways to prosper in those clutch moments.
And for the first time, they have won a game in the Stanley Cup Final.
Carter Verhaeghe snapped a wrister from the slot high into the back of the net 4:27 into the extra session and the Panthers rallied to beat the heavily favored Vegas Golden Knights 3-2 on Thursday night in Game 3. Vegas still leads the title series 2-1, but the Panthers have a pulse and are no longer on life support and found a way to turn overtime into their favorite time once again.
“We’re the Cats,” said Verhaeghe, after his fourth career playoff overtime goal. “We have whatever lives we have, but it’s awesome. It shows how great our team is and the guys on our team have no quit in them.”
The Panthers are a perfect 7-0 in these playoffs in overtime, winning more games in extra sessions than they have won in regulation.
“We don’t know how we’re going to get there,” said Matthew Tkachuk, who tied the game with 2:13 left in regulation. “But we’re going to do everything we can to get there.”
Tkachuk gave Florida a fighting chance, and the Panthers won their first title-series game in seven tries. Florida had to fend off a power play to start overtime, and Verhaeghe got the winner with Tkachuk providing some traffic in front of the net.
“I had a little bit of time to walk in and shoot,” Verhaeghe said. “I’m so happy it went in.”
Game 4 is Saturday night.
“There’s a little bit of collective confidence,” said Florida coach Paul Maurice, whose teams are 19-7 in overtime games over his playoff career.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 25 shots for Florida which was a complete turnaround from when he got the quick hook early in Game 2. Adin Hill made 20 saves for Vegas but got beat on the only shot that came his way in overtime.
“Normally that’s a shot that we’re going to give up, get the save and move on,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “It wasn’t like an odd-man rush through the middle so I didn’t mind the way we defended it. … I mean, they’ve got good players. They’re going to make some plays.”
Brandon Montour also scored for the Panthers, which pulled Bobrovsky down 2-1 late in the third period for the extra attacker and Tkachuk, who left for parts of the first and second periods after taking a massive blow and needing to be cleared by the NHL’s concussion protocol program, made that move pay off when he knotted the game.
His goal brought life into a very nervous building. But the Panthers were furious, and replays showed they had a reason to be, when Gustav Forsling was sent to the box with 11.2 seconds remaining for tripping. Florida survived that scare, and a few minutes later, had life in the series again.
“Nobody cares how we got here,” Tkachuk said. “It’s a 2-1 series.”
The odds are still stacked against them, but the Panthers at least have a bit more statistical hope now. Of the previous 55 teams to trail 2-1 at this juncture of the Stanley Cup Final, 11 have actually came all the way back to hoist the trophy over their heads.
It is unlikely, sure. So are the Panthers, who were the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, were down 3-1 to the Boston Bruins in Round 1, were 133 seconds away from trailing this series 3-0, and now have tons of reasons for optimism.
“We found our legs a little bit,” Florida’s San Reinhart said.
Jonathan Marchessault and Mark Stone had power-play goals for the Golden Knights.
Marchessault’s goal was his 13th in his last 13 playoff games, his fourth of this series and his third with the man advantage.
As if all that was not enough, there was a little history made in there as well. Vegas joined the 1980 New York Islanders as the only team with at least two power-play goals in three consecutive games in the Cup final. And Marchessault became the third player in the last 35 years to score in each of the first three games of a title series, joining Steve Yzerman in 1997 with the Detroit Red Wings and Jake Guentzel with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017.
But it was not enough to give Vegas a 3-0 commanding lead in the series.
“I didn’t mind our game,” Cassidy said. “They made a play in overtime. … Sometimes that happens to you.”
Florida’s 0-6 record in Stanley Cup Final games before Thursday was well short of the record for franchise futility in the title series. St. Louis Blues lost its first 13 games in the Cup final. Before Thursday, Florida’s last home game in the title series was June 10, 1996, when Uwe Krupp scored in the third overtime for a 1-0 win as the Colorado Avalanche finished off a four-game sweep of the Panthers for the Cup. Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was in the crowd, as was NBA great Charles Barkley, and former Dolphins star Dan Marino was the celebrity drummer to welcome the Panthers onto the ice.
