Down 2-1, Panthers still have plenty of hope in East final against Rangers
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Carter Verhaeghe pulled his vehicle out of the players’ parking lot after leaving the Florida Panthers’ practice facility Monday afternoon, only to notice about 50 fans standing on the side of the road clamoring for autographs.
So he stopped and signed for a while. Brandon Montour did the same. More players, such as captain Aleksander Barkov, followed suit a few minutes later. The fans — some kids, some adults, some carrying signs, some wearing jerseys — were, as would be expected, thrilled.
Down 2-1 in the Eastern Conference final to the New York Rangers, the Panthers — seeking a second consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Final — still believe going into Game 4 on their home ice Tuesday night. Evidently, so do their fans.
“You wake up, the sun is shining, everything’s good here,” Panthers forward Sam Bennett said. “It’s not too difficult.”
If only beating the Rangers was so easy.
New York grabbed home-ice back in the series with a 5-4 overtime win Sunday, a game in which the Panthers fired off more than 100 shot attempts, more than doubling what the Rangers tried during the contest. Florida created chance after chance after chance in the third period, especially late.
And it didn’t matter. The Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin came up with big stops every time he needed to, Alex Wennberg got a deflection past the Panthers’ Sergei Bobrovsky to win the game, and the team with the best record in the regular season moved two wins away from claiming the East.
“The third was probably our toughest go in the series so far,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said of the Florida onslaught in the third period of Game 3, when the Panthers erased a 4-2 deficit but never reclaimed the lead.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice said he believes his team left work Monday with a firm understanding of what needs to be adjusted for Game 4.
“At no point will our game plan be, ‘Hey, let’s shoot fewer pucks for better opportunities,’ ” Maurice said. “What we’re trying to create is certainly goals, but we scored three in Game 1 and four in Game 3. It’s not goals. We have to defend. … We have a pretty good idea of where we can be marginally better with the puck — I say marginally because we can make slight improvements with it — but we’re pretty good with the puck.”