Hurricanes are Desperate, Panthers Not Celebrating

SUNRISE — With the way the Eastern Conference finals have been going thus far, the Carolina Hurricanes are desperate. And the Florida Panthers are not ready to celebrate.

At least not yet.

The Panthers hold a 3-0 edge in this final series before the Final series, but there are no brooms anywhere in their vicinity.

Florida, certainly, remembers what happened last year after they went up 3-0 on Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Final.

Paul Maurice, again, brought up his team’s past when it comes to closing out a lopsided series.

“We got up 3-0 with Toronto two years ago and wanted it so bad that we tried to win the game on every play,’’ Maurice mentioned for at least the fifth time in the past couple of weeks.

“I think we kind of learned from that. You saw last year. We got beat 8-1. It’s the same idea. They have the desperation advantage. You have potentially the desire advantage – just the achievement idea that you get to move on and both teams will fight that. That will be on display in the game.

“Can we control the desire emotion and play the game? Can they control the desperation emotion and play the game? The common denominator is, you’ve just got to play the game. It’s just hockey.”

Brad Marchand has been through every playoff emotion imaginable in his 172 career playoff games.

Saturday, he scored his 60th career playoff goal.

Yet Marchand is not ready to declare victory and realizes the Hurricanes are a better team than the lopsided scores the Panthers have meted out in the first three games of this series may indicate.

The Panthers have outscored the Hurricanes 16-4 in the three games thus far. Carolina has not led for a single second.

“I don’t think that the way that the games have been played is really an indication of what the outcomes have been score-wise,’’ said Marchand, who won the Stanley Cup with Boston in 2011, but lost in the Final two other times.

“They’ve been pretty tight. It just seems like we got a couple of bounces and a couple of lucky breaks here and there that have kind of given us a pretty good lead.

“We’ve capitalized on special teams which is huge this time of year. It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to change anything about next game. We’re going to come in and prepare the same way. It’s always the toughest one to get so we’ve got to make sure we bring our best.”

The Hurricanes do not have to be reminded that they now have lost 15 consecutive conference final games — the last seven to the Panthers — and are on the brink of being swept for the fourth straight time in the ECF dating back to 2009.

Nor do the Hurricanes have to be reminded that in the three games of this series they have been outscored by the Panthers by a 16-4 margin.

They will be playing Monday with desperation.

That’s the only way to describe it.

And, the only way the Hurricanes can come at Game 4.

The Panthers, however, do not seem ready to start popping the bubbly.

“You don’t think about that,’’ Marchand said. “We are prepared to go 7 here. The biggest thing with this group is that we’re really good at focusing on what we need to do, stay in the moment, and not look ahead. You can’t start looking ahead. That’s a very dangerous game to play.’’

Saturday, Carolina was in the game for two periods, but in a perfect example of the “next man up” mentality, Jesper Boqvist, who was inserted into the lineup and placed on the top line with Sasha Barkov and Evan Rodrigues to replace the injured Sam Reinhart, skated around Dmitry Orlov and slipped a neat backhander behind Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov to make it 2-1 just 1:29 into the third period.

That opened the floodgates.

Florida scored four more goals by the time Carolina had a chance to breathe to make what was a close game yet another rout.

Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour, who was Maurice’s captain for a number of his years with the Hurricanes, lamented the turnovers and faced the inevitable question of how to approach the next game, knowing it could end the Hurricanes season.

“We have to try to put our best foot forward. I felt like we did tonight, for two periods, especially with what we were throwing out there,’’ Brind’Amour said. “We had some missing pieces. We were hanging in there. That’s the way we have to approach the game. We just can’t come off it. You can’t even go a shift thinking about playing a different way. That’s what’s going to happen.”

Yeah, he was not all that convincing.

Like Jon Cooper and Craig Berube in the two series before him, Brind’Amour seems flummoxed when it comes to what the Panthers have done to his team.

The Panthers are a runaway locomotive right now, and when they get going, good luck slowing them down.

“I thought the game was right there for us through two periods,’’ Carolina captain Jordan Staal said. “A turnover and they made us pay and they got rolling. It’s a tough team to stop when they get the juices flowing and we’re playing turnover city there.”

About the closest thing to a positive comment he was able to make was “you’ve got to win four.”

It’s not over yet.

The closeout game, as the Panthers know from past experiences, is always the toughest one to get.

2025 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: GAME 4

CAROLINA HURRICANES @ FLORIDA PANTHERS

Panthers lead Best-of-7 Series 3-0

• When: Monday, 8 p.m. 
• Where: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise
• National TV: TNT/truTV
• National Streaming: Max
• Radio: WQAM 560-AM; WPOW 96.5-FM2; WBZT 1230-AM (Palm Beach); WCTH 100.3-FM (Florida Keys); SiriusXM
• Panthers Radio Streaming: SiriusXM 932, NHL App
• Series Schedule (all games on TNT/tru, 8 p.m.) — Game 1: Florida 5, Carolina 2; Game 2: Florida 5, Carolina 0; Game 3: Florida 6, Carolina 2; Game 4: Monday @Florida; Game 5*: Wednesday @Carolina; Game 6*: Friday, May 30 @Florida; Game 7*: Sunday, June 1 @Carolina
• Regular Season: Panthers Won 2-1
• How They Got Here: Carolina d. New Jersey (5), Washington (5); Florida d. Tampa Bay (5), Toronto (7).
• All-Time Regular Season Series: Carolina/Hartford leads 74-49-10, 11 ties
• Postseason History: Florida 1-0 (2023 ECF in 4)