FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers’ expectations for the Stanley Cup Playoffs did not include, as coach Paul Maurice put it, “world domination.”
“Nobody’s gone 16-0 as far as I know,” Maurice said Tuesday, “so you’re always going to suffer a defeat.”
Although the Panthers were humbled a bit by a 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Second Round on Monday, their focus was on bouncing back quickly and correcting what went wrong heading into Game 2 of the best-of -7 series at Amerant Bank Arena on Wednesday (7:30 pm ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).
“It’s the playoffs,” forward Anton Lundell said. “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. We need to learn. We watched some video. We watched some stuff we can do even better tomorrow. We had a lot of things we did well, but, obviously, we didn’t get the results we wanted, so we just tried to see what we want to do even better and try to fix that for tomorrow.”
The Panthers were dominant at times when they defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, winning the first three games before closing out the series in five. So, Game 1 against the Bruins, who were riding an emotional high after advancing with a 2-1 overtime win against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of their first-round series Saturday, was a bit of a reality check.
It also provided an impetus to elevate their game.
“It’s so mentally challenging, the postseason, when you’re going through a series, the ups and downs,” Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said. “You can be up 3-0, lose a game in Tampa and it feels like the world is ending for a minute. Everything settles back down and then you get through a series, and you kind of mentally relax a little bit. So, a game like last night will get you back into it, and that’s where you want to be.
“You want to be engaged. You want to right in thick of things.”
Maurice wouldn’t reveal the details, but said the Panthers reviewed “two parts we think we can be a world better” at in Game 2. One was likely puck management after defensive-zone turnovers led directly to the Bruins’ first two goals Monday and snowballed into five consecutive goals against after the Panthers took a 1-0 lead when Matthew Tkachuk scored at 11:45 of the second period.
“I think we just came off of our game a bit,” forward Kevin Stenlund said. “We were a bit sloppy, a bit slow. We’ve just got to try to be better tomorrow.”
The Panthers also need to execute better in the offensive zone at even strength and on the power play. Despite outshooting the Bruins 39-29, they scored only one goal against goalie Jeremy Swayman, who has not allowed more than two goals in any of their seven playoff starts. Although Swayman has a 1.42 goals-against average and .955 save percentage in the postseason, the Panthers believe they can do more to make things difficult.
“Obviously, we’ve got to be in front of him,” Stenlund said. “If he sees the puck, it makes it a lot easier to save, so try not to let him see the puck and make it hard on him.”
The Panthers were 0-for-3 on the power play in Game 1 after going 0-for-11 against the Bruins with the man-advantage during the regular season. Boston has allowed only one power-play goal on 24 times short-handed in the playoffs (95.8 percent), so finding a way to break through against their penalty kill will be pivotal.
“They’re obviously solid,” Reinhart said. “That’s a strength of theirs. I think just be a little bit more cerebral, a little bit quicker, work off the net a little more. You don’t need to look for the perfect play all the time. I think the more you can create around the net, the more plays will open up for us.”
Getting back forward Sam Bennett, who hasn’t played since Game 2 of the first round because of an upper-body injury, could help. Maurice said Bennett may return in “one of the next three games, for sure.”
Bennett had two points (one goal, one assist) in two playoff games before he was injured and 15 points (five goals, 10 assists) in 20 playoff games during Florida’s run to the Stanley Cup Final last season.
Ultimately, it will come down to Florida cleaning up its errors from Game 1 and learning from that defeat as the series and the playoffs progress.
“You’re always going to have a game that you don’t like,” Maurice said. “And rebounding, learning from it, even if it’s not the critical piece to the next game, you’ll always come back to it that there will be a loss in there that will really help you moving forward.”
