Panthers played ‘well enough to win’ Game 1 of Cup Final. Now comes the ‘grind’ of the series

Let’s start with this: A win is a win, especially in the throes of the Stanley Cup Final, and the Florida Panthers aren’t going to downplay their 3-0 shutout of the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday at Amerant Bank Arena to begin the best-of-7 series.

But as to how the Panthers got to that win? Matthew Tkachuk probably summed it up the most succinctly.

“They played well,” the Panthers’ star winger said, “and we played well enough to win. Just really grinded it out.”

The Panthers made the most of their early chances on Saturday, scoring in the opening minutes of both the first and second period to build a lead before relying on Sergei Bobrovsky to be otherworldly in net en route to his second shutout of the playoffs — a 32-save masterpiece against a high-flying Oilers offense led by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

For one night, it worked.

For a full series, they might not be as fortunate.

The Panthers are cognizant of that.

“We’re going to find out how much better we can get,” coach Paul Maurice said. “They played a very strong game. I thought they moved well. I thought their transition game was really quick and we would’ve expected that, so there’s areas in that that I think we can improve.”

For the Panthers to keep their winning ways, they will look to build on what they did in the third period, when they held Edmonton to just three high-danger chances — none of which got to the net — and just seven shots on goal. There was a nearly eight-minute stretch — from the 9:46 mark of the third period to when Edmonton pulled goaltender Stuart Skinner for an extra attacker with 2:20 left in regulation — when the Oilers had just one shot on goal.

Compare that to the first two periods, when Edmonton had 50 shot attempts and 15 high-danger chances, including 13 high-danger shots on goal, as they attacked the Panthers in waves.

“Our third period was our best period,” forward Evan Rodrigues said. “After a week off [between winning the Eastern Conference final and starting the Stanley Cup Final], it seemed like we were a little tense at the beginning throwing some pucks away, not doing some things we’re used to doing, but I thought we got better in the second and I thought we were really good in the third.”

At that point, the Panthers were already up 2-0 on goals from Carter Verhaeghe on a two-on-one with Aleksander Barkov in the first period and a Rodrigues snap shot from the slot in the second.

And when the Panthers have a lead in the third, they are known to lock things down. Florida is 8-0 this playoffs when leading after two periods and has outscored opponents 25-11 in the third period. Edmonton, meanwhile, has been outscored 20-11 in the third period this postseason.

“I think [the improvement] happened during the game,” Maurice said. “We liked our third period an awful lot. That’s the way we would like to look. It wasn’t necessarily anything new but some of this is contextual in it was probably good for us to see. We score early in that game and we find sometimes that in the most pressured games, the team that scores early, the other team gets to their game right away. And if it goes to an even longer period of time, it’s just constantly feeling each other out.”

And then if things aren’t going right, they are fortunate to have a stellar goaltender saving them in Bobrovsky.

Bobrovsky survived both waves of attacks from the Oilers in the first two periods before the Panthers settled the game down.

As a result, he logged his second shutout of this year’s playoffs and his third ever in the postseason.

And there’s a lot of historical context behind Bobrovsky’s stellar night.

▪ He is the first Panthers goaltender in club history to record multiple shutouts in one postseason.

▪ It was the 16th shutout in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final and seventh in the past 76 years and the first since Roberto Luongo turned aside all 36 shots he faced in the 2011 Cup Final-opener for the Vancouver Canucks against the Boston Bruins.

▪ At 35 years and 262 days old, Bobrovsky became the oldest goaltender ever to open the Stanley Cup Final with a shutout, supplanting Patrick Roy (35 years, 233 days in 2001).

▪ The win was Bobrovsky’s 13th of the postseason, the most ever by a Panthers goaltender in one playoff year.

“He’s just been unreal,” Tkachuk said. “His preparation is incredible. His work ethic, his character, it’s everything you want in a teammate, especially a goalie. He has everything.”

He also has the Panthers up 1-0 in the Stanley Cup Final. The rest of the team hopes to step its game up to keep the wins coming.

But that said...

“We’ll take a win any way we can get it,” Verhaeghe said.

They have their first. They just need three more.

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