Florida Panthers’ Stanley Cup dream, sweet playoff run end in brutal 9-3 loss as Vegas reigns | Opinion

There is an unfortunate new entry in the sports category, “How can something so good end so badly?”

There will be a time to look back and appreciate what the Florida Panthers did this postseason in reaching the Stanley Cup Final as a No. 8 seed.

That time was not Tuesday night in a Game 5 in Las Vegas that could only have gone worse for Florida if a sudden sinkhole in the ice had swallowed the Panthers whole.

The Cats were beaten 9-3 as the Vegas Golden Knights raised the Cup in only their sixth year, denying Florida its first such honor in its 29th season. It wasn’t close. Vegas won the series 4-1. Florida was outscored, 26-12. Brutal.

“They were outstanding. We had no answer for them,” said coach Paul Maurice, ever classy.

For a bit of salt in the wound, Jonathan Marchessault, whom the previous Panthers regime unwisely left available to Vegas in the 2017 expansion draft, won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Final MVP. Another discarded ex-Panther, Reilly Smith, had a goal and an assist in the title-clinching win.

The Panthers played without star Matthew Tkachuk, their leading scorer in the regular season and playoffs, due to a fractured sternum (breastbone). Tkachuk had a marvelous postseason though his Final was marred by penalties and limited by ailments. Maurice said four other Panthers had broken bones. The explanation for that? Hockey.

“He is top player for our team, huge player for our team,” Aleksander Barkov had said before the game of Tkachuk. “Everyone has to step up a little bit.”

Nobody seemed to.

Was this the same Panthers team that gifted fans with a mesmerizing run of series wins over mighty Boston, vaunted Toronto and then Carolina? Not quite...

They sure could have used Tkachuk’s offensive pop in Tuesday’s elimination game, as well as better defense and better most everything else.

Tuesday night ended a two-month playoff run like no other in South Florida history for the Miami Heat and Panthers together as No. 8 seeds who shocked their sports to make it all the way to the championship series. The ending for both was a sad mix of anticlimax and disappointment as each bowed out in five games, but it won’t overshadow the larger accomplishment.

We may never see the Heat and Panthers do this together again.

Alas, the Double-Dip Jinx lives on.

This marked the 10th time one market has had a team in both the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final the same season, and those blessed markets are now 0 for 10 in pulling off the double championship. Those markets are now only 5-15 overall.

Vegas was up 1-0 mid-first period — Florida not only failing on a power play but giving up a short-handed goal to Mark Stone, who put the puck up and over Sergei Bobrovsky’s left shoulder. That left the Panthers 0 for 14 on the power play in this Final. It was 2-0 only 1:49 later on a Nicolas Hague shot.

Briefly it appeared to be a game early in the second period when Aaron Ekblad finished a pass from Nick Cousins to make it 2-1. Bottle that moment and the hope that went with it. Didn’t last.

Quickly came a four-goal Vegas torrent in the second. I would recite all of the Vegas scoring from here but that might qualify as cruel and unusual punishment of Bobrovksy, who had enough of that on the ice. (Bobrovsky inexplicably was not pulled; it would have been a mercy benching). Florida at last cashed consolation goals by Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett.

The Panthers had won that first playoff series vs. Boston from this same 3-1 deficit, stunningly winning three elimination games in a row.

“We talked about it. We’ve done it before,” noted Marc Staal. “It’s nice to have that to fall back on, mentally.”

It did a whole lotta no good at all Tuesday night.

Said the coach, Maurice, before the game: “I want us to play unencumbered by the situation ... mentally relaxed.”

They did neither, wilting after a fast start, the absence of Tkachuk seeming to accelerate everything.

Florida was looking to recreate the Boston miracle of the first round, but the historical odds were enormous. Teams down 3-1 in an NHL playoff series are now only 32-306 on advancing.

It has happened exactly once in Stanley Cup Final history. By the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 1942. World War II was going on. FDR was president. The Leafs coach and captain were Hap Day and Syl Apps. (They were into one-syllable names back then.) Those Leafs, in ‘42, were the last team in a Final to score nine goals before Vegas tattooed that one on the Cats.

Tuesday’s sting will subside fast enough and should leave the Panthers and their fans proud of this postseason overall ending in the club’s first Stanley Cup Final in 27 years.

Florida finishes as the second best team in hockey.

If only the distance between the Panthers and the best team didn’t seem quite so great at the moment.