Now just one win away from winning the championship, the Florida Panthers are treating Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final like it was Game 44 of the regular season.
“Right now, our mind is just focused on recovery and getting ready for the next game,” forward Sam Bennett said after the team’s Game 3 win over the Edmonton Oilers to come close to a sweep. “I don’t think anybody can really see ahead.”
With head coach Paul Maurice and captain Aleksander Barkov in tip-top form, the Panthers have their sights set solely on Saturday night’s Game 4 road trip as the next challenge on their season-long journey. The Panthers have the chance to take home the Cup for the first time in franchise history, but they’re approaching the occasion with the same no-nonsense attitude they’ve taken in previous playoff games.
“We did a good job of sticking to a simple mindset of just focusing on one game: winning the first period, winning the first few shifts,” winger Matthew Tkachuk said Friday. “We were a really calm, composed and relaxed team today, so let’s use that to our advantage.”
Reaching the finals two years in a row is a big advantage, but this series plays out the other way for Florida, who lost momentum after a series of injuries last year against Las Vegas. The core team also knows all too well what it’s like to face elimination this late in the playoffs, having watched the Golden Knights reach the finals at their first chance in 2023.
Maurice doesn’t think finishing any series, especially a final, is a killer instinct issue, but he wants the Panthers to realize this is an elimination game and a situation most of the players and staff have never been in before.
“We’re going back to what we know,” Maurice said. “There’s nothing new about what we’re trying to do. The puck drops, it’s the exact same sport, so there’s nothing new here. It’s just a different situation.”
The context is that they’re leading the series 3-0 despite losing two of the three games, they have a great goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky, who has stopped 82 of 86 shots and his .953 save percentage ranks in the top 10 in NHL finals history, and they’re scoring on their chances while the Oilers haven’t.
Edmonton coach Chris Knobloch believes his players’ inability to finish games was the deciding factor in this series, pointing to analytics that showed they had more quality scoring chances than in any of the first three rounds.
“It’s about being able to put the puck in the net and obviously that’s a very important part of the game,” Knobloch said.
The Oilers have players who were on the last two teams that fell behind in the Cup final: Montreal’s Corey Perry in 2021 and New Jersey’s Adam Henrique in 2012. Both teams avoided the sweep, and the Devils made Game 6 a coast-to-coast, back-and-forth trip, just like this series.
“When everyone else has given up on you, you believe in the team that’s here,” said Enrique, who scored the game-winning goal in Game 4 12 years ago. “Yes, it’s a big mountain to climb, but you don’t need to look at the big picture. You just focus on taking the first few steps, getting that first foothold and going from there. It’s a challenge we can certainly take on.”
The league hasn’t seen a Stanley Cup Final end 4-0 since Detroit beat Washington for a back-to-back in 1998. The last time a team overcame a 3-0 deficit to win the final was the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1942.
Perry, the first player to reach the finals with five different teams, agreed with many of his teammates that he thought the Oilers had done better than losing the series 3-0, but all understood the predicament and the odds they faced.
“We definitely put ourselves in a big hole,” Perry said. “Do I think we can be in a better situation? Possibly, but they’re a good team. They took advantage of our mistakes and that’s probably why we played.”
If things continue this way, the series will be over and the Panthers will be able to party with the Stanley Cup in hand on the six-hour flight to South Florida. They’re desperately trying to keep the celebration out of sight and out of mind until Game 4, so it doesn’t become a distraction.
“We don’t think too far ahead,” said Barkov, who along with Bobrovsky is the favorite to win the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP. “The opportunities are right in front of us, but we don’t think about them. We can’t dwell on them. We just take it one moment at a time.”