TORONTO — In the aftermath of the Florida Panthers’ wildest win ever Sunday and maybe the biggest upset in NHL history, Paul Maurice got asked whether he and his team would be satisfied if this is where the 2022-23 NHL season ended. Their first-round upset of the record-setting Bruins will go down in history no matter what happens in the rest of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs and gave the Panthers, who had only won four postseason series in their history before this week, their biggest achievement in a generation.
Florida celebrated it Sunday and into Monday, and even couldn’t help but keep talking about it Tuesday before opening Round 2 against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Canada, and yet there was no feeling this had to be the singular achievement for this group. “It makes you thirsty,” Paul Maurice said Monday, and his team is on track for more after stealing Game 1 from the Maple Leafs, 4-2, in Toronto.
The Panthers went up 2-0 in the first 28 minutes, survived a second-period onslaught from the Maple Leafs and then flipped the game back in their favor with one breakaway by left wing Carter Verhaeghe — Florida’s constant postseason hero — to snatch away home-ice advantage by going up 1-0 in this best-of-7 series.
Behind it all, the constant was star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who made 34 saves on 36 shots to help the Panthers weather their bad moments and get the most out of their good ones. Florida went 3 for 3 on the penalty kill, and at least one of those successful kills was all Bobrovsky’s doing, and never trailed despite getting outshot 13-6 in the potentially pivotal second period.
The Panthers have now won every game in which they’ve scored first and they’ve done it in four straight, first to pull off their astonishing first-round comeback and now to land the first punch on another Stanley Cup contender. When Florida ousted Boston over the weekend, the Panthers reward was to face the new Cup favorites, according to DraftKings, in the second round.
Florida, however, is no longer just some afterthought in the championship race — the Panthers now have the third best title chances, according to MoneyPuck.com — and they made another statement to open the Eastern Conference semifinals.
For the fourth straight game, Florida scored first, even though it committed two penalties in the first five minutes. After two straight successful penalty kills, All-Star center Aleksander Barkov barreled his way from one end of the ice to the other and teed up a point-blank shot for Verhaeghe, only the winger couldn’t quite handle the puck enough to tap it into the open net.
It wasn’t a missed opportunity the Panthers regretted for long. On the very next shift, superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk danced with the puck in the slot to draw in the defense, shot off Toronto goaltender Ilya Samsonov’s pads and created a rebound goal for forward Nick Cousins to put the Panthers up 1-0 with 10:35 left in the first period.
With 12:02 left in the second period, center Sam Bennett pushed the lead up to 2-0 by tipping in a point shot by star defenseman Aaron Ekblad and Florida needed it. The Maple Leafs stormed back in the next seven minutes, getting a transition goal from left wing Michael Knies just 11 seconds later and then another one in transition from left wing Michael Bunting to tie the game at 2-2 with 5:09 left in the second.
These Panthers are dangerous, though, because they can win wars of attrition, but also create goals out of nowhere and the ultimate go-ahead goal was one of the latter. Even though Toronto dominated the second period in shots and scoring chances, Florida was still ahead 3-2 at the second intermission because right wing Anthony Duclair and Verhaeghe, two of the fastest skaters in the NHL, got out in transition and Verhaeghe scored a breakaway goal with 2:13 left in the period.
The Panthers buried the Maple Leafs in the third period. Star defenseman Brandon Montour, with one of his five shots, put Florida up 4-2 with a goal on a delayed penalty with 7:36 left after he, Barkov and Tkachuk toyed with Toronto’s defense with an extra skater on the ice.
Tkachuk finished with three assists for his fifth multi-point game of these Stanley Cup playoffs; Barkov added two assists, launched four shots and now has six points in his last four games; and Bennett had a goal and assist.