Tkachuk’s goal with 4.9 seconds left sends Panthers to first Stanley Cup Final since 1996
The seconds ticked away in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals and the Florida Panthers, even after giving up a game-tying goal with just 3:22 left, were in their comfort zone with Matthew Tkachuk around the crease and one last chance to win the Eastern Conference finals in regulation.
A power play with 57 seconds remaining gave the Panthers a chance and they sent one last barrage at the Carolina Hurricanes. Sam Reinhart nearly got a shot past Frederik Andersen. Aleksander Barkov got the rebound and drew the defense to set up Tkachuk behind the net. The superstar right wing held the puck until all but 4.9 seconds remained and a pile-up opened up a shooting lane, and then he did what he does best. In the clutch again, Tkachuk sent Florida to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1996 with a last-minute, 4-3 win Wednesday in Sunrise.
“They score with three minutes left. You’d think that it’s, Uh oh, here we go, but it’s the opposite,” Tkachuk said. “A lot of people contributed on that. ... It was very fairly easy for me to just put it in.”
Barkov countered.
“I wouldn’t say it was easy,” the All-Star center said.
Nothing was for the Panthers, even though they swept the Hurricanes, 4-0, in the series.
Every game was decided by one goal. Two of the four games went to overtime and Florida had to pull off two comebacks.
And that was only this one series. Florida was also nine points out of a postseason spot after Christmas, didn’t qualify for the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs until the final week of the regular season, fell to the brink of elimination in Round 1 after starting the Stanley Cup playoffs by losing 3 of 4 to the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins and then ripped off 11 wins in 12 games -- all decided by two goals or fewer -- to improbably win the Eastern Conference.
The hero was, fittingly, Tkachuk. He started the East finals by ending the sixth longest game in NHL history with a game-winning goal in the fourth overtime of Game 1 and followed it up with another game-winning goal in overtime of Game 2. In Game 4, the All-Star winger scored once on a power play to put the Panthers up 2-0 in the first period and finally, after they blew two leads, sent them to the Cup Finals with his most dramatic goal yet.
He fell to his knees, slid across the neutral zone and spread his arms wide. As soon as Tkachuk got up, star defenseman Brandon Montour tackled him back to the ground.
The rest Florida’s top power-play unit piled on top of him. Carolina’s top penalty-killing unit breathed heavily and watched in disbelief from around their goal. Coach Paul Maurice punched assistant coach Jamie Kompon, who runs the power play, in his ribs as right wing Anthony Duclair leaned over the side of the bench with his arms spread out, wiggling his fingers and beaming with joy.
Around them, 20,065 fans, who waited 27 years for something like this, came unglued.
The Panthers are the first No. 8 seed to reach the Finals since 2017 and only the fifth since 2006. They’re four wins away from becoming only the second No. 8 seed to win a Stanley Cup. Either the Golden Knights or Stars will try to stop them next week.
Right now, it’s hard to imagine it happening only because losses have been astonishingly rare for most of the last month and the wins have come in every manner imaginable.
Of its 11 wins in their its 12 games, six have come in overtime and six required a comeback, but Florida never trailed in its last two.
Duclair scored just 41 seconds in off assists by Barkov and Verhaeghe, and Tkachuk scored his first goal less than 10 minutes later on a power play. After the Hurricanes responded with back-to-back goals in the first and second periods, left wing Ryan Lomberg broke the tie with his first goal of the Cup playoffs to put the Panthers back ahead 3-2 with 10:11 left in the second period.
Florida tried to make the one-goal lead hold up and nearly did until Carolina right wing Jesper Fast scored with 3:22 to go.
From there, the ending was almost too obvious.
“Who else, right?” star defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “It’s unexplainable what he’s brought to this team.”
Tkachuk, 25, now has nine goals and 12 assists, and is second in the playoffs with 21 points. Those 21 points, in less than one year, already have him tied with star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau for third on the franchise’s all-time postseason points list.
His arrival in the offseason has transformed the Panthers. It was a bold move by general manager Bill Zito to trade Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar to the Flames to get him, and already he’s validated.
In Round 1, Tkachuk set up the series-winning goal in overtime of Game 7 in Boston. In Round 2, Florida made quick work of the Maple Leafs, who briefly became the new Cup favorite, in just five games.
The ECF was his new masterwork, scoring just about every meaningful goal to bounce another perennial title contender in less than a week.
“I saw it was ‘Chucky,’” forward Anton Lundell said, “so from there I was just waiting for it to go in.”
It was an incredible ending to an incredible run. Any single part of it would have been unbelievable, let alone when taken all together and especially when put in context of this franchise’s history.
The Panthers’ only other run to the Finals came way back in 1996, in only their third season of existence. For a quarter of a century, they never even won another postseason series and then when they finally did in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, they promptly got swept by the rival Lightning. In 29 seasons, Florida has been to the playoffs just nine times and four of those have come in the past four years — and one of those appearances only happened after the NHL expanded the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs to 22 teams because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maybe nothing about this run is more unlikely than the Panthers’ other biggest postseason hero: Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky signed a seven-year, $70 million deal to come to South Florida in 2019 to make him the highest paid goalie in the NHL and it immediately looked like one of the worst contracts in the league. He had a meager .902 save percentage in his first two seasons in South Florida, got benched during the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, rebounded a little bit during the 2021-22 NHL season at then didn’t even start at the beginning of these payoffs, with the Panthers opting instead for goaltender Alex Lyon, who, at 30, had only played 39 games in the NHL.
Barely a month later, the 34-year-old Russian manned his crease to near perfection while the fans, who once derided him, serenaded him with chants of, “Bobby! Bobby!” After he backstopped the Panthers to three straight wins to rally Florida past the Bruins, he stopped 164 of 174 shots from Toronto and then 168 of 174 from the Hurricanes in the NHL Conferene Finals. His save percentage is the best in the playoffs among goalies to play at least 10 games.
He was the last one off the ice and still the crowd chanted, “Bobby! Bobby!” Everyone who wanted to got a moment with the Prince of Wales Trophy.
There’s an old NHL superstition suggesting players shouldn’t touch the trophies they get for winning the conference finals. A bigger, more important trophy lies ahead and teams should stay focused on the Cup. No one should care about the Prince of Wales Trophy.
The Panthers aren’t embarrassed to admit they do. After all they went through to get here, it was hard to blame them.
“We’re the type of team that the last thing that we’re going to do is be superstitious about not touching it or anything. Nobody said we were going to make the playoffs,” Tkachuk said. “I think it’s pretty cool to touch it, and carry it around and take pictures with it. We earned that thing and definitely didn’t do it the easy way.”
This story was originally published May 24, 2023 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Tkachuk’s goal with 4.9 seconds left sends Panthers to first Stanley Cup Final since 1996."
