NEW YORK -- The Florida Panthers are well aware of the opportunity they have in front of them because it’s one they’ve been working toward since last June 13.
On that day they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final, ending their hopes of winning their first championship last season, and beginning a long road to having another shot at it this season.
Now, they’re just one win away.
The Panthers will host the New York Rangers in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final at Amerant Bank Arena on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS, CBC) needing a victory to win the best-of-7 series and advance to Cup Final for the second straight season.
“Just taking one game at a time,” defenseman Gustav Forsling said Friday. “It’s easy to say, but that’s what we try to do, not get ahead ourselves. It’s still a great, great team over there that can turn this around, so we want to shut them down right away.”
Of course, the Panthers’ ultimate goal is not simply to get back to the Cup Final. They want to win it this time.
Getting back is no simple task, though.
No team that lost in the Cup Final has returned to it the following season since the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. Pittsburgh went on defeat the Detroit Red Wings in seven games in a rematch of the 2008 Cup Final it lost in six games.
Since then, two teams have repeated as Stanley Cup champions -- Pittsburgh (2016, 2017) and the Tampa Bay Lightning (2020, 2021) -- but Cup runners-up have had a more difficult time. Three didn’t even qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs the season after losing in the Final -- the New Jersey Devils (2012), Dallas Stars (2020) and Montreal Canadiens (2021).
Battered by injuries, the Panthers licked their wounds after falling short against the Golden Knights last season, healed and came back stronger.
After qualifying for the playoffs as the second wild card from the Eastern Conference when it was 42-32-8 last season, Florida was 55-24-6 this season to finish first in the Atlantic Division despite missing center Sam Bennett for 12 of the first 13 games with multiple lower-body injuries and defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour for the first 16 games while each recovered from offseason shoulder surgery.
“We knew we had a good team and then we have these three guys out of our lineup, three really important guys out of the lineup, so there’s not the certainty,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “I think we were a little better hockey team than people knew last year and then we improved in ways that you probably couldn’t see early on because of the injuries.”
Maurice points to the additions general manager Bill Zito made in the offseason and during this season for helping the Panthers get back to this point. With Ekblad and Montour injured and Radko Gudas departing for the Anaheim Ducks as an unrestricted free agent, the Panthers bolstered their defense on July 1 by signing Niko Mikkola to a three-year contract and Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Dmitry Kulikov to one-year contracts.
Florida also strengthened its forward depth by signing Evan Rodrigues to a four-year contract on July 2 and acquiring Vladimir Tarasenko (from Ottawa Senators) and Kyle Okposo (Buffalo Sabres) before the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline on March 8. Healthy at the start of the playoffs after Ekblad sat out the final six regular-season games, the Panthers defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins in the first two rounds before pushing the Rangers, the Presidents’ Trophy winners with an NHL-leading 55-23-4 record, to the brink of elimination.
“I think that we’ve had a belief,” Maurice said. “But even with that, every series that we’ve been in have been, and this one maybe more than any of them, incredibly tight. There’s no momentum. I would say I don’t know that there was any momentum coming off going to the Final last year. There wasn’t a loss, but there wasn’t necessarily a gain, and we were riding high.
“They earned it. These guys have earned it.”
The job is not done, yet. After winning the past two games, including a 3-2 victory in Game 5 at New York on Thursday, the Panthers expect another pushback from the Rangers in this tight series. The past four games were decided by one goal, including three in overtime.
“We’ve seen it a couple times already that you can’t just let your foot off the gas,” Panthers forward Steven Lorentz said. “Obviously, these are the hardest games to win. Especially at this point in the playoffs, nobody’s expecting an early summer. Everybody’s going as hard as they can right to the final whistle, right to the final buzzer.
“There’s going to be no easy games, obviously, from here on out.”
The Panthers had a chance to punch their ticket to the Final for the first time since 1996 at home last season, hosting the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final, and took care of business with a 4-3 victory. They’ll have the energy of their home crowd behind them again Saturday, so they’ll need to channel that, control their emotions and focus on getting the win they need to complete their journey back to the Final.
“It’s playoff hockey, so every game it’s so much fun to play,” Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky said after Game 5 on Thursday. “It’s a blessing to be able to play hockey at this time of the year. And in our home building, it’s going to be amazing, too.”
