After a 27-year wait and 10-day break, Panthers drop Game 1 of Stanley Cup Final in Vegas

The Florida Panthers waited 27 years to get back to the Stanley Cup Final and then 10 more days to actually finally play in one. Their run through the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs has been unlike any other in history and the build-up to their showdown with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, by the time they finally got to Nevada earlier this week, was miserable.

“I can speak for us,” superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk said Friday on the eve of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final. “We need this puck drop tomorrow.”

They were eager to land the first blow on the Golden Knights on Saturday and, in the third period of another tight game, their eagerness to make a winning play backfired and led to a series-opening 5-2 loss.

The Panthers’ first line unloaded on Vegas with a barrage of shots and pushed up to try for potential game-winning goal with the score knotted at 2-2. The Golden Knights found a lane to counter and get in transition. Vegas defenseman Zach Whitecloud scored the go-ahead, game-winning goal out of the ensuing scramble with 13:01 remaining.

For the first time since Round 1, the Panthers failed to steal Game 1 on the road and now, down 1-0 in the series, will have to wait until at least Game 2 on Monday to try to snatch home-ice advantage away from the Golden Knights, as they’ve done in every round of the Stanley Cup playoffs so far.

The loss was only Florida’s second in its last 13 games and this was the first one of those games decided by more than two goals — and it was 4-2 until an empty-net goal in the final two minutes. It’s the margin the Panthers have played with through this entire postseason and used to go from the last team into the Stanley Cup playoffs all the way to the Cup Final.

It, of course, meant the Panthers had plenty of chances to win in Vegas. Florida went ahead 1-0 on a short-handed goal by six-time All-Star center Eric Staal in the first period and tied the score at 2-2 when right wing Anthony Duclair scored right off a faceoff with 10.2 seconds left in the second period.

Across the board, the margins were slim — the Golden Knights outshot Florida, 34-33, and had a 36-28 edge in scoring chances — and the Golden Knights made the winning plays. Vegas scored again with 6:19 left to go up 4-2 and then immediately got an empty-net goal with 1:45 remaining to send the 18,432 at T-Mobile Arena into a celebration.

Road magic disappears as Florida Panthers fall 5-2 at Vegas in Game 1 of Stanley Cup Final | Opinion

The Panthers believed in their plan to survive — and, really, take advantage of — their 10 days off between the end of the Eastern Conference finals and the start of the Cup Final. They practiced essentially every other day, going hard for one day and then taking it easy the next, to keep the typical every-other-day rhythm of the postseason. They used the break to get almost completely healthy — only third-line forward Eetu Luostarinen was still out of the lineup — and finally recover from their four-overtime marathon with in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

There were variables they would never be able to account for, though, and Sergei Bobrovsky was the main one. The star goaltender became the favorite for the Conn Smythe Trophy by shutting down virtually everyone he faced in the first three rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but a long layoff can affect a goalie most of all. Florida could prepare all it could, but nothing could compare for the real thing.

This went for Bobrovsky and virtually everyone on the Panthers roster. Only three players had been to a Cup Final before this year and only two have won a Stanley Cup. Paul Maurice got to a Final once as a 35-year-old in his seventh season as a coach and then waited 21 years to get back this season.

The fans, too, waited a generation — 27 years, to be exact — to get back to this stage. When the Panthers last made it here, they’d only been around for three seasons and suspicions their run to the 1996 Stanley Cup Final was just a fluke were quickly confirmed when they failed to even qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs in 18 of the next 22 seasons.

They were the epitome of NHL futility and dysfunction for more than two decades until their fortunes flipped in 2020, with new management and a newfound level of consistency. This is Florida’s fourth straight time in the postseason — it’s the only time in history it has pulled off a postseason streak like this — and it gave the Panthers a measure of confidence they could pull off an underdog run even after they only made it into the Cup playoffs in the last week of the regular season.

They were an underdog in every round of the Eastern Conference playoffs — albeit a smaller one with each passing round — and again in the Final, which is exactly how they liked it. They also quickly made it obvious there’s no real difference between the Golden Knights, who finished the regular season with the best record in the Western Conference, and themselves.

For the most part, the rust wasn’t an issue. Bobrovsky made 29 saves on 34 shots and Staal put Florida up 1-0 in the first 10 minutes

Vegas, however, countered with a power-play goal with 2:42 left in the period — a one-timer from winger Jonathan Marchessault, whom the Golden Knights got from the Panthers as part of their 2017 NHL Expansion Draft — to make it 1-1 at the first intermission.

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They traded goals again in the second period — Golden Knights defenseman Shea Theodore putting Vegas ahead 2-1 with 9:06 left in the period and Duclair answering with a game-tying goal with 10.2 seconds to go off an assist by All-Star center Aleksander Barkov — and went to the third tied at 2-2, setting the stage for another close game for Florida.

The Panthers got into the Final by winning 11 of 12 and all 12 games were decided by one or two goals. This time, Vegas made the winning plays and left Florida in a series hole for the first time since the first round of the playoffs.