SUNRISE, Fla. — Aaron Ekblad can admit it now: He thought his Florida Panthers were toast.
It was the middle of the winter and the Panthers were staring at a brutal January, with 13 games in 23 days, nine of them on the road and a long way to go just to climb out of a nine-point hole and make the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. Something like what happened Wednesday — with Matthew Tkachuk scoring with 4.9 seconds left in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals to beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-3, for a 4-0 sweep and spot in the Stanley Cup Final — was impossible to imagine. Ekblad fessed up to as much when asked bluntly whether he could have ever pictured these Panthers, in their darkest moments, getting all the way the Cup Final for the first time since 1996.
“No,” the star defenseman said Wednesday, offering up a one-word answer and letting it linger for a few moments before elaborating. “Simply, you couldn’t.”
