The Florida Panthers seemed to always have the elixir for whatever Tampa Bay threw at them throughout their 4-1 domination of the opening round of the NHL Playoffs. Panthers center Eetu Luostarinen posted a goal and three assists as Florida took a 6-3 win to clinch the series in Game 5 at Amalie Arena on Wednesday.
Luostarinen gave Florida a 5-3 lead at 13:02 in the third period and assisted Sam Bennett’s score at 15:13 in the second as the Panthers were never threatened after breaking the 3-3 tie.
Florida’s championship experience and physicality returned to the norm with the returns from injury of Sam Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk, and Aleksander Barkov for the playoff series, since the Panthers never allowed Tampa Bay to take and maintain control at any point in the five games. The theme was again stated in Game 5 when the Panthers answered immediately upon any Lightning score.
“The have an exceptional team, not just an average team, but an exceptional team. Two years ago, they played Boston, and they’re down like 3-1 to the present Cup champs and they come back and win that series. If they don’t win that series, who knows what happens to that team. They get a good vibe to win because it is something that is learned. and fortunately for us, we have had that for like 10-12 years. They built a team; they got a sniff of it. They went to the Final. They didn’t win, came back, went to the Final and won. They’re primarily the same team but now, they know how to do it.” – Lightning head coach John Cooper on the rise of the Florida Panthers.
Both teams have owned the Eastern Conference, as Florida or Tampa Bay have played for the Stanley Cup title in each of the last five years and the Lightning raised the Cup in 2020 and 2021, while the Panthers are the defending Stanley Cup champions after last season’s win over Edmonton.
“We’re in a really tough division, and we’ve been the rep in the conference final or in the Stanley Cup Final the last five years,” said Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper. “It was our turn for a while. Now, it’s theirs, and our job is to make sure it’s our turn again.”
The Panthers’ physicality and defense were once again the story as Florida outhit Tampa Bay, 48-28, and the Cats blocked 18 Bolts’ shots.
“We had good goal tending and some good shot blocks,” said Panthers coach Paul Maurice. “I think for a team to learn to grow, we have to be better than we were in the third, but reasonably smartly played because in the position that Tampa found itself in with their skill set, they had to take some chances.”
Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky was at the realm of the Panthers’ excellence in the five games. Once Tampa Bay fell behind, 4-3, on Bennett’s goal, he turned away Tampa Bay shots as the Lightning never turned momentum or put themselves in position to pull out the Game 5 win and send this back to Sunrise, Fla., on Friday.
Bobrovsky picked up the four wins in the series and he crafted a 2.21 GAA. He saw 111 shot attempts and turned away 100 and solidfied the Panthers’ physicality and aggression on defense with his consistency between the pipes.
“Sam Bennett, 4-on-4, gets a great chance,” said Maurice. “We had an odd-man rush for a goal, and that’s really what will happen. They put tremendous pressure on you in the offensive zone, they deep pinch everything and now you have got a battle along the walls. We turned somw over and we will learn from that.”
Tampa Bay finished with a four-seed in the Eastern Conference and the Lightning brought in players who were contributors and allowed lots of younger Bolts players to fit into the lines after Steven Stamkos left for the Nashville Predators in free agency. While this may have looked like a “rebuild” for the season, GM Julien BriseBois and Cooper reconfigured the team and allowed it to turn the page while having the opportunity to make the playoffs and have the potential to move through them.
“When the cap went flat, it was a tough one for us and our GM has found a way to not only keep the team together, but so many players have left and he has replaced them with other guys, who haven’t really missed a step,” said Cooper.
The ability for the Lightning to maintain it’s playoff streak to eight consecutive years and then to be a player in the standings with an opportunity to potentially net a 2-seed late in the season showed the sustainability of the franchise. Tampa Bay’s reputation and now the Panthers looking for their own successive Stanley Cups is a clear definition of why that the path to a Stanley Cup Championship has to move through the state of Florida.
“Hockey here is alive and well and winning helps,” said Cooper. “It helped when we were winning and it’s clearly helps south Florida with them winning. In the end, people like to attach themselves to winners and they have built a great fan base down there. I remember going to play games there where we had more fans in the building than they did. They have done a fabulous job of building a brand and building a team and they have gotten rewarded for it.”
