George Richards, FHN Publisher
The Florida Panthers were not talking about nervousness nor a lack of energy following Monday night’s overtime win against the Washington Capitals in Game 4.
The Panthers not only beat the Capitals on Monday to avoid coming back home in a 3-1 series hole, but proved to a lot of people — themselves perhaps most importantly — that they could win a hard-fought game and handle whatever the playoffs had to offer.
Yes, the result was big.
Huge, even.
But the performance itself have the Panthers in the right state of mind going into Wednesday’s game in Sunrise.
“I think we need to build off of the good things we did,” coach Andrew Brunette said. “The feeling we had after the game; that it was hard, we grinded through it and found a way to win. To keep that positive feeling and the momentum and play the way we did for much of the night.
“It was important that we got to our game, for one. Right from the start, we played the way we played all year. We had the puck more, were closer, played faster and were supportive up the ice. We did a lot of the things which has made us successful. We kept that yin-and-yang in which we managed the game extremely well.”
The Panthers played their most complete game of this postseason on Monday, holding possession for much of the game and getting plenty of offensive looks.
Washington, with Ilya Samsonov in net, still held a 2-1 lead heading into the final minutes.
Has the Capitals held on to beat Florida, they would have stolen a pivotal game in this season and come to South Florida thinking of eliminating the top seeded team in the entire league.
Now, things are back to even — and the Panthers can take their first series lead with a win on home ice.
“We finally had our best game of the series,’’ Game 4 hero Carter Verhaeghe said. “I think we’re going to keep on building. This is something to build on.”
Beating the Capitals will not come easy.
It has not been all year for the Panthers.
When the two teams met in the regular season, the three games were all decided by a goal.
So far, two of the first four games have been within a goal or two as the series has, for the most part, been extremely tightly played.
“Things were looking a little shaky at the end but we showed a lot of poise,’’ Brunette said. “Again, the resilience that we’ve shown all season long came through there at the end.”
Florida has received strong goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky with Samsonov keeping the Capitals in Monday’s game.
But the Panthers may have finally figured some things out.
“Stick with the game plan and see it through,” Brunette said. “Find the best solution and recognize how hard it was and how good it felt, how much fun it is when it happens. Those are all great building stones for our group. We get to go home, hopefully the nerves are out of our game and we just play.”