SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers are headed to the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, but they couldn’t avoid a first-round series with the best team in the NHL.
After finishing the regular season with a 6-4 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday in Sunrise, the Panthers had to settle for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference and an impending trip to Massachusetts to face the league-best Boston Bruins in the first round.
The opening-round showdown will pit the last two Presidents’ Trophy winners — Florida in 2022 and the Bruins this year — against each other in a best-of-7 series. The Panthers (42-32-8) will travel up to Boston this weekend and open the Stanley Cup playoffs Monday at TD Garden.
Florida could have avoided a first-round series with the Bruins by beating the Hurricanes, but fell behind 2-0 in, then rallied to tie the game at 2-2 with two goals in 2:19 early in the third period only to give up two in 21 seconds less than three minutes later to fall short. Both teams scored twice in the last three minutes — and the Panthers briefly cut the deficit to 5-4 before Carolina scored its second empty-net goal with a minute left — as what was left of the 19,160 at FLA Live Arena started to chant, “Beat the Bruins!”
It let the Islanders grab the top wild card and they will head up to Raleigh, North Carolina, to face the Hurricanes (52-21-9) in Round 1 next week, while Florida gets ready to face Boston, which set a single-season NHL record for wins this year.
Although the NHL no longer seeds teams from Nos. 1-8 in each conference, the Panthers are effectively the No. 8 seed as the second and final wild card, drawing the top team in the East. Teams in their position—as a No. 8 seed or second wild card—have pulled off first-round upset of the top seed 19 times in NHL history, including twice in 2019. Presidents’ Trophy winners have also lost in the first round seven times, with the Lightning being the most recent in 2019 — with star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky leading the Blue Jackets’ upset.
Florida split the season series with the Bruins in the regular season, with the home team winning every time. Goaltender Alex Lyon, who started the final eight games of the regular season for the Panthers, started the final game of the season series back in January and led Florida to an overtime win in its final game before the 2023 NHL All-Star Game.
The decision in goal is the toughest choice coach Paul Maurice will have to make in the next few days. Lyon took over last month when Bobrovsky was out with an illness and promptly led the Panthers on a season-best six-game winning streak to clinch a playoff spot, but the 30-year-old American, who had only 31 games of NHL experience before this run, has now lost two in a row to end the season. Bobrovsky, on the other hand, is a two-time Vezina Trophy winner and is the second highest paid goalie in the NHL, but won’t have played in three weeks once the postseason begins.
Even in these last two losses, Lyon has certainly been good enough — he stopped 30 of 34 shots in the finale and posted a .942 save percentage in these last eight games — and Bobrovsky erratic enough throughout his time in South Florida to justify sticking with the backup, but Maurice wouldn’t divulge his plan when asked about it Wednesday.
Otherwise, the Panthers will spend the next couple of days trying to get center Sam Bennett as healthy as possible, hoping he’ll be able to return next week after missing the last 12 games of the regular season with a soft-tissue injury, and start to prepare for the Bruins.
An upset will be a daunting task, but so was just getting to the Cup playoffs after sitting nine points out of playoff position after Christmas. Florida is ready to take its shot.
