LAS VEGAS — The Florida Panthers were defiant and they had every right to be. They were up against elimination and stuck playing without Matthew Tkachuk, and still they truly believed they could beat the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday, extend their season and underdog story for at least a few more days, and eventually pull off one of the biggest comebacks in the history of the Stanley Cup Final, just as they had already done by just making it there.
They did what they were supposed to for about 12 minutes. The Panthers peppered Adin Hill with shots and Radko Gudas even tried to rattle the Golden Knights goaltender by stopping short and spraying ice into his face on one of his first shifts of the game. They killed off a power play and got one of their own. They dialed up one perfect play, only for Hill to rob Aleksander Barkov and then it all fell apart. Vegas scored a short-handed goal and then an even-strength goal less than two minutes later. In the end, the Golden Knights did what they were supposed to do and blew out Florida, 8-3, in Las Vegas to win their first Stanley Cup.
One of the great runs in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs is over. The Panthers, after sneaking into the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs as the lowest seeded team in the last week of the regular season and making it all the way to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, lost their final series 4-1. The Golden Knights are champions for the first time.
After building an entire run on escape acts and improbable comebacks, Florida couldn’t pull off one more. The Panthers still have never won in Vegas and lost all three of their games there in this series, starting with back-to-back games to open the series. Florida bounced back with one win at home — another comeback, scoring a game-tying goal with 2:13 left in the third period of Game 3 on Thursday — and then couldn’t quite rally from three goals down in Game 4, leaving the Panthers in a near insurmountable hole.
Only one team in NHL history has rallied to win the championship after losing 3 of 4 to start the Cup Final — the Maple Leafs, way back in the 1942 Stanley Cup Final — and Florida couldn’t fight back to try to join the list, even though it had pulled off the same sort of comeback on the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins in the first round back in April.
Back then, the Panthers were the overlooked underdogs and had Tkachuk to lead them with 11 points in the seven-game series. By the time Florida arrived in the Final, no one was going to underestimate the Panthers and the Golden Knights mostly controlled the series from start to finish. Once injuries piled up for Florida, a comeback became too much for even these Panthers to pull off.
Tkachuk, who led Florida with 109 points in the regular season and 24 in the playoffs, did not play in Game 5, dealing with an apparent upper-body injury. The All-Star winger scored just three points in the championship series and was a shell of himself in Game 4 after taking a hard open-ice hit from Vegas forward Keegan Kolesar in the first period of Game 3 on Thursday. Although he came back to score the game-tying goal in Game 3, Tkachuk played just 16:40 in Game 4 on Saturday and only four shifts in the third period. Ultimately, he and Florida decided he couldn’t play in Game 5, even with the Panthers’ season on the line.
It was a devastating blow to an already reeling team and struggling power play. Tkachuk, who also led Florida with four power-play goals and nine power-play points, typically plays the pesky net-front role for the Panthers and Florida went 0 for 1 on the power play without him Tuesday, finishing the series 0 for 14.
The Panthers are the first team to fail to score a power-play goal in the Final since the Red Wings got swept in the 1948 Stanley Cup Final.
Fittingly, the game turned on a Florida power play. On one end, the Panthers set up a back-door play for Barkov, left wing Carter Verhaeghe made a pinpoint cross-ice path through the heart of Vegas’ defense and Hill slid over to cut off the All-Star center’s angle as he tried to find a shooting lane. On the other, Golden Knights right wing Mark Stone got in transition after a Verhaeghe couldn’t handle a pass from center Sam Bennett near the blue line, stopped on a dime after star defenseman Brandon Montour dove to cut off the passing lane and ripped a go-ahead goal past star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky with 8:08 left in the first period.
Vegas had as many shots as Florida on the Panthers’ first power play and went up 1-0, then Nicholas Hague pushed lead to 2-0 with 6:19 left in the first after Bobrovsky made a sliding save on star center Jack Eichel and just couldn’t quite fall on the puck, leaving an easy rebound chance for the Golden Knights defenseman.
It quickly made Game 5 into something of a coronation for Vegas. The Golden Knights started five of their original players — including Vegas wingers Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault, whom the Golden Knights got from Florida as part of the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft — and the XXXX inside T-Mobile Arena spent long parts of the game chanting, “We want the Cup!”
With Tkachuk out and the Stanley Cup in the arena, there was a sense of inevitability and the early 2-0 lead only bolstered Vegas’ enthusiasm. Even after star defenseman Aaron Ekblad scored with 17:45 left in the second period to cut the Golden Knights’ lead to 2-1, Florida’s burst only lasted so long before Vegas pulled away.
First, Golden Knights defenseman Alec Martinez scored with 9:32 left in the period, pinging a shot off the top left corner of the goal to get it past Bobrovsky and put Vegas back up 3-1. It was only the start of an onslaught: Smith scored just 1:45 later to push the Golden Knights’ lead to 4-1 and all five Panthers on the ice keeled over, hands on their knees while the crowd roared and a title celebration inched closer.
Those two goals came as a part of a barrage of nine straight shots by Vegas. Florida ran out of gas, the Golden Knights went for the kill and the Panthers’ last hope for a desperation comeback faded away when Stone scored his second goal of the game to put Vegas up 5-1 with 2:45 left.
One more goal by the Golden Knights with 1.2 seconds left in the period gave Vegas a 6-1 lead at the second intermission and Stone, the captain, finished off a hat trick with an empty-net goal with 5:54 remaining.
The rout brings an end to one of the most mesmerizing, captivating seasons in Florida’s rocky history. The Panthers started the year as the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners and expected to be one of the best teams in the league again, even after changing coaches and trading away multiple stars to get Tkachuk from the Flames. Instead, Florida sat nine points out of a postseason spot after Christmas and only clinched a spot in the playoffs with a game to spare. Once they got there, the Panthers faced the monumental task of trying to upset Boston, which set regular-season records for points and wins, and somehow pulled it off, then stormed through the rest of the Eastern Conference by beating the Maple Leafs in five games and sweeping the Hurricanes.
It brought Florida to the Final for only the second time — the Panthers, who made it to the 1996 Stanley Cup Final in just their third season of existence, had only even been to the playoffs eight times and won four series in their history before this year — and the run ended there, certainly more quickly than Florida had hoped after it suddenly in the spring started to play like the contender it was supposed to be.
At the start of the season, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see the Panthers in the Final. In January or even as recently as April, it would’ve been stunning. Now, Florida goes into the offseason trying to climb over another hump.
Last year, the Panthers won their first Presidents’ Trophy and a series for the first time since 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs. This year, they won a game in the Final for the first time ever. They’re closer to a cup than they’ve ever been and yet still wound up far away.
