After nightmare ending to Game 2, Panthers go to Tampa with ‘belief’ they can save season

For more than 59 minutes Thursday, the Florida Panthers felt like they were going to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning or, at least, they were playing enough of a smart, mistake-free game not lose Game 2 to their in-state rival.

All it took was one moment of disaster — a game-winning goal for the Lightning with 3.8 seconds remaining — and now Florida is nearing the brink of a second-round exit from the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, down 2-0 to the back-to-back champion.

“It is,” star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky said Thursday, “what it is.”

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The Panthers committed a giveaway with about 15 seconds left, lost track of Nikita Kucherov behind the net and made “a fatal mistake,” as interim coach Andrew Brunette put it, when defensemen MacKenzie Weegar and Gustav Forsling both followed to the star right wing to make up for their lapse. It left Ross Colton unmarked in front of the goal, and the versatile Tampa Bay forward scored with 3.8 seconds left for the second-latest regulation go-ahead goal in the Lightning’s postseason history.

It left Florida rattled in the moment and Tampa Bay jubilant. The Panthers knew the margin for error was going to be slim, and they leave South Florida for Tampa feeling like they let two winnable games slip away. It could cost them their season if they can’t recover and win either Sunday or Monday at Amalie Arena.

In the first, the Panthers were within one with five minutes left, only to let the Lightning score a pair of power-play goals in the final 4:06 to pull away in Sunrise. In the second, Florida was seconds from overtime — after rallying from an early one-goal deficit — before suffering an astonishing 2-1 loss at FLA Live Arena.

‘A fatal mistake’: Lightning stuns Panthers with 3.8 seconds left to take 2-0 series lead

“I liked a lot of things in our game really for about 80 or probably about 100 of the 120 minutes we played there, and last night I loved 59 minutes and 40 seconds of our game,” Brunette said. “Unfortunately, that was the difference.”

So far, the 2022 rematch has played out similarly to the 2021 first-round series.

Last year, the Lightning won by going 8 for 20 on the power play, getting a .929 save percentage from star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy and besting the Panthers in the crucial moments of games.

This year, Tampa Bay has gone 4 for 9 on the power play, gotten a .972 save percentage from Vasilevskiy and outscoring Florida, 4-0, in two third periods.

Somehow, the Panthers have almost been able to survive the first two roadblocks because they’ve consistently outplayed the Lightning in even-strength action and gotten a .922 save percentage from Bobrovsky.

The difference between the teams has been razor thin — they’re separated by six shots on goal, 11 scoring chances and three high-danger chances — and the difference in the series is Tampa Bay is capitalizing in those moments Florida is less than perfect.

“You’re playing with margins,” Brunette said. “Right now, they’re winning the margin battle.”

It puts the Panthers in a precarious spot as they get ready to go on the road for Games 3 and 4, needing to win one to avoid a sweep and two to take back the home-ice advantage they earned by winning the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time. Florida, according to NaturalStatTrick.com’s expected goals, should have split the two games in Broward County or even have a 2-0 series lead of its own if the first two games were played entirely at even strength. The Panthers gifted the Lightning a pair of games and there was no bigger gift than the one they gave at the end of Game 2.

“They’re a team that doesn’t make any [mistakes],” Brunette said. “We played 59 minutes and 40 seconds.”

It’s hard enough to beat Tampa Bay four times in a series — no one has done it since the Bobrovsky-led Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs — and now Florida, essentially, will have to play five or six winning games to avoid a second-round upset.

Those reasons for frustration are the same reasons for optimism, though.

In Round 1, the Panthers were a shell of their regular-season selves for three games and were able to regroup, beat the Washington Capitals and advance in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 1996. In Round 2, Florida is less than two shots and scoring chances off its regular-season 60-minute average.

“We’ve come back all kinds of different times this year. We have a belief that we can do it and the other part of it is I really liked our game,” Brunette said. “The belief comes from the way we played for, like I said, those about 100 minutes of 120.”

Mason Marchment doubtful in Tampa

Mason Marchment is unlikely to suit up for the Panthers for Games 3 and 4 in Tampa this weekend as he continues to deal with a lower-body injury.

The winger has missed four straight games.

Florida is slated to practice Saturday at the Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs before traveling across the state for two road games. Florida will have a clearer idea about Marchment’s status then.

Anton Lundell, meanwhile, is not dealing with an injury, even though he played only 4:07 in Game 2. It was a coach’s decision to bench the rookie center after playing just five shifts in the first period, Brunette said.

“We had to get whoever was going,” the coach said. “That was a really important game or us.”