Florida Panthers’ 5-4 Game 1 home loss to Tampa Bay a crushing start to playoffs | Opinion

Respect can be a funny thing. Earning it can be a long process. If the time comes when you feel you continue to be denied the respect you deserve, it may be time to demand it — to simply take it in a way that leaves little doubt it belongs to you.

This NHL playoff series is about that for the Florida Panthers. This team, and this franchise..

Is this your time, Cats? Finally?

This was the best regular season in club history. But does that make this the best team the Cats have had?

Prove it.

The chance started Sunday night, but ended in a crushing 5-4 home loss to Tampa Bay to begin the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Florida rallied from two deficits to lead 4-3, only to lose Game 1 of this Sunshine State Showdown series in the first round of the postseason, with Game 2 back in Sunrise Tuesday night.

Tampa tied it 4-4 with its third power-play goal of the night, and won it with 1:14 left in regulation. The Panthers’ penalty killing was the deflating factor.

“Five on five we played well,” said Aleksander Barkov. “On the penalty killing we needed to be a little bit better.”

The Cats played with maximum heart. That isn’t enough to beat the reigning league champions.

“It’s a long series. We just have to put it behind us and be fresh for the next one,” said Cats goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. “They have a good team and we have a good team. We just have to forget this one.”

Said second-year coach Joel Quenneville: “A lot of positives. But also things we need to work on.”

Regular seasons don’t mean much now. Here forward is all that matters.

The Panthers are South Florida’s best major team right now; sorry Miami Heat. But the onus was on Florida to prove that it should be nobody’s underdog in these teams’ first-ever postseason meeting.

Sunday was only the 26th home playoff game in Panthers history, and only the 15th since 1996.

It makes this feel like the club’s biggest series in 25 years.

It sure felt like that in the third period when Jonathan Huberdeau’s tying goal on a 1-on-1 breakaway and then Owen Tippett’s goal — on a gorgeous Huberdeau assist — ignited delirium in the home crowd of 9,646, max allowed by COVID protocols.

Florida led 2-1 after the first period on Barkov’s short deposit off a Jonathan Huberdeau long-range shot on a power play, and then on Carter Verhaeghe’s scorching slapshot. But momentum and the score turned to Tampa with a pair of second period power play goals by Nikita Kucherov.

The disrespect of the Panthers entering this first-round series was plain.

Florida won five of eight games against Tampa Bay in the regular season, including 5-1 and 4-0 routs to end it. Panthers finished ahead of the Lightning in the Central division to win home-ice advantage.

The Cats entered the postseason on a huge 15-2 run at home, the hotter team, and with an offense firing on all cylinders.

Yet Tampa Bay universally was the betting favorite to win the series entering Game 1, and was the favorite to take the opener Sunday on Florida’s home ice in its Sunrise barn.

The Panthers’ season justifies the bravado of their postseason theme: #FearNoOne. And yet the doubters remained.

But here’s the thing.

All of that made perfect sense. All of the doubts.

Tampa Bay is the reigning NHL champion. It has won some of the pedigree the Panthers are still chasing.

Florida — in the league one year later and in every way the little brother since — takes aim at its first playoff series advance since 1996. It isn’t enough to note 25 years have flown. Put in in human terms.

Current Panthers star Huberdeau turned 3 years old the very night the Panthers played Game 1 in their first (and only, thus far) Stanley Cup Finals.

Barkov was not yet a twinkle in his parents’ eyes.

Those are the two young veterans who’ve been waiting for years to be surrounded with enough like talent to break through. Is it happening now? Finally?

Cats fans navigating first grade and barely old enough to recall that magical spring-into-summer of ‘96, of toy rats blackening the home ice in joyous triumph, may have families of their own now.

For the Panthers, the chance to earn that elusive respect — to demand it, to take it — began Sunday night.

The only way to get it, to even begin to get close, is clear:

Win a playoff series.

This one.