Don’t look now, but the Florida Panthers appear to be hitting their stride.
After dropping back-to-back games to open their second-round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida has fought back with a few haymakers capped off by Wednesday’s 6-1 victory in Game 5.
Now the Panthers are heading back to South Florida with a chance to knock out the Maple Leafs for the second time in three postseasons.
It won’t be easy, but it appears that over the past week, Florida has started to look more like the team they want to be, physically overpowering their opponent while allowing their skills to shine through.
That was certainly the game on Wednesday night.
Let’s get to Game 5’s takeaways:
BOQVIST’S BIG NIGHT
Jesper Boqvist had been on the ice for each of Florida’s first seven playoff games, skating primarily on the fourth line.
When Florida fell into a 0-2 hole against Toronto, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice made a fairly drastic change to his forward group, swapping out the entire fourth line.
Well, the Cats haven’t lost since, which understandably kept the roster intact, but when Evan Rodrigues was ruled out of Game 5, Maurice turned to Boqvist to take Rodrigues’ spot on Florida’s top line.
The 26-year-old Swede responded with one of his best games in a Panthers jersey, picking up a goal and an assist while logging a plus-3 on-ice rating and adding three shots and eight hits in 15:15 of ice time.
“He’s kind of a guy that scored big goals for us this year,” Maurice said. “He ended up with 12, but they weren’t the last goal in a run. Those are the fun stories for a room when (Boqvist) gets one, (Gadjovich) has one, because those guys work hard. They don’t get on the magazines, right? They’re not the front of it, but it’s special on the bench when those guys score.”
BOB KEEPS ROLLING
Sergei Bobrovsky is locked in.
He came 66 seconds away from logging his second straight shutout on Wednesday night, boasting an impressive goalless streak of 147:58.
Despite a tough start to the series in which he allowed 13 goals on just 81 shots, Bobrovsky is showing why he’s earned a reputation as one of the NHL’s absolute best money goalies of his generation.
Over the past two-plus games, because Bob was stellar at the end of Game 3 and during the overtime, we’re seeing exactly Florida’s players and coaching do nothing but exude confidence in their netminder.
“I think Sergei is always available to get into a groove,” Maurice said. “I think his prep doesn’t change, he has no idea about his stats, but I think recently, and it was true in the latter half of the Tampa series, the guys in front are playing a game that he understands, that he has history with this year. He’s had stretches this year where the shot total wasn’t big for him, he never got warmed up in the game, he didn’t get a bunch of outside angle shots that let him feel good about his game, (instead he faced) a breakaway, but not a ton of them. So he’s kind of trained himself with this style of game that we play, (other than) the breakaways, which is a silly thing to say. He has a fairly consistent expectation of what’s going to happen next. I don’t know if that makes saving the puck any easier for him, just his anticipation and becomes very good.”
BEFORE THE BLOWOUT
Looking at the final score, one might believe that this was a Panthers-dominating game from start to finish.
That wasn’t quite the case.
While yes, Florida did score the first goal and play a statistically strong opening period, the game was still incredibly tight for basically the entire first half of it.
If not for a couple big saves by Bobrovsky and a couple fortunate goal posts that Toronto hit, the game could have taken a much different turn.
“(Taking an early lead) felt important because that game was really fast and well executed by both teams up and down the ice early,” Maurice said. “There was lots of really good execution in that for both teams, so getting the first one was important. I thought it flat lined a little bit after that for us, and then probably, where the game doesn’t break, is Sergei Bobrovsky. He made saves on two or three breakaways tonight night, so I think he was the pivot point in the way that game went.”
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