Brooms out! Florida Panthers win again, join Heat at 3-0 as double title dream gets closer | Opinion
Hard to say it was worth the wait — it had been 27 years! — but it sure felt like it Monday night. It sounded like it, too, in the bedlam of the Florida Panthers’ home arena in Sunrise.
It marked the franchise’s first home game in an NHL Eastern Conference finals since May 30, 1996. And it turned into a celebration.
The Cats beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 1-0, to take a giant 3-0 series lead — now one win from reaching the club’s first Stanley Cup Final since ‘96. That chance will come Wednesday night back on home ice as Florida seeks its advance with a sweep.
“A really good, gritty win,” coach Paul Maurice called it.
And the brooms are out in South Florida as this sensational, thoroughly unexpected double playoff run continues in full gallop.
The Miami Heat on Tuesday night and the Panthers on Wednesday have the chance to turn 3-0 leads into sweeps and advance to the Stanley Cup Final and NBA Finals, respectively.
Two No. 8 seeds have never done that together, and the Greater Miami market has them both.
The night before and 25 miles south the Boston Celtics laid down like disinterested dogs against the Heat and fell into a 3-0 series abyss in the basketball Eastern finals.
Would Carolina do the same? No. Unlike the Celtics, they showed heart and fight, at least. But still lost.
Sam Reinhart’s mid-second-period goal on a wrist shot made the horn blast with assists from Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett — the line that has been magic for Florida this postseason.
Speaking of magic: Sergei Bobrovsky. Brick Wall Bob. Again.
Three Cats fans at the game lifted their red jerseys to reveal the letter each had painted on his chest: B O B
By late in the game euphoric fans were chanting, “Bob-by, Bob-by!”
He heard the chant.
“Makes me excited,” he said. “Makes me appreciate.”
As always he deflected praise like it was an opponent’s shot, crediting his teammates’ blocked shots, but Bobrovsky has earned every bit of adulation in these playoffs, Monday’s rare-in-hockey shutout just the latest evidence.
“The key piece,” Maurice called him.
Another major player, Aleksander Barkov, left the game with a lower-body injury after absorbing a hit. It did not appear terribly serious, but that’s an injury update Panthers fans will anxiously await moving forward. Maurice offered no update postgame.
I wondered how many Cats fans in the sold-out crowd Monday were also in the long-since-defunct Miami Arena that night in ‘96 when the club hosted a game in the Eastern finals? Bill Clinton was president. Dan Marino was still a Dolphin.
Half of the Panthers’ current roster, 18 of 36 players, were not yet born. Six others — including star Aleksander Barkov — were in diapers, less than 1 year old. Tkachuk was a toddling 2-year-old in Arizona. Bobrovsky was wondering what his future might hold as an 8-year-old boy in southwestern Siberia.
Twenty-seven years since the Panthers have been this close to a chance at the club’s first Stanley Cup trophy.
The crowd was a as festive as you’d imagine.
“Mr. Marlin” Jeff Conine, wearing a No. 16 Barkov jersey, banged the pregame drum.
Golfer Brooks Koepka showed up with his PGA Championship trophy up in the suite with him. He didn’t get booed when the video screen showed him. (The Panthers jersey he wore helped.)
And the three guys with “B O B” on their bellies got cheered every time they were shown.
This is the historical weight of a 3-0 series lead in hockey:
Of 204 teams in NHL history with a 3-0 series leads, 200 — 98 percent — have gone on to advance.
A Panthers loss and 2-1 series lead still would have found the team in good shape, but it would have slashed the margin for error and made Game 4 Wednesday night a good deal more nerve-wracking.
Now, the brooms are out in Miami and in Sunrise.
This postseason has been a thrill-ride for South Florida, but the next two nights tease us with a whole new level of that — times two.
