Five keys to the Panthers’ surprising run to the Stanley Cup Final
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Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporter
The Florida Panthers are bound for the Stanley Cup Final.
Just as we all predicted.
(Kidding.)
In reality, Florida’s trajectory this season reads like the plot of a classic Disney movie, a tale of plucky underdogs fueled by self-belief slaying dragons and beating the odds en route to unexpected victory. And with all the main characters aligned to make it happen.
Anti-hero Matthew Tkachuk has been the polarizing, productive face of the Panthers’ playoff run.
Quiet, unassuming Sergei Bobrovsky is enjoying a career Renaissance as Florida’s backbone in net.
Breakout star Brandon Montour has brought swagger to the blue line.
Franchise veterans Aleksander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad have stepped up to help Florida (finally) reach its potential.
And role players from Carter Verhaeghe to Sam Bennett to Sam Reinhart have rounded out the Panthers’ cast with robust contributions.
The Panthers have made for great theater. They’ll be fascinating — and fun — to watch in the upcoming Cup Final. Let’s dive into exactly what Florida has done so well to become the darling of the NHL postseason.
(More than) happy to be here
Florida’s greatest superpower might be the element of surprise.
Let’s back up: The Panthers were bottom-dwellers in the Atlantic Division for about two-thirds of the regular season. General manager Bill Zito stood pat at the trade deadline anyway, professing his faith in the already assembled group. It was a gutsy — and seemingly questionable — decision.
Fast-forward a few months and Zito is a finalist for GM of the Year honors. Clearly his gamble paid off. Florida went all-out down the stretch to push past Pittsburgh at the 11th hour and secure the Eastern Conference’s eighth and final playoff seed.
Their reward? A first-round meeting with the Boston Bruins, who had the best regular season in league history. Florida was unfazed and won the series, 4-3. Next came the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Florida sent them packing, 4-1. By the time the Panthers matched up with Carolina in the Eastern Conference finals, they looked fully unstoppable and sent the Hurricanes home with a series sweep.
The Panthers haven’t been weighed down by outside pressure. Heck, they weren’t even the betting favorite in any game until they led Carolina 2-0 in the East finals. If Florida found that disrespectful, it never showed. The Panthers are having too good a time to care.
“Why play in this situation if you can’t have fun with it?” mused Tkachuk ahead of Game 3 against the Hurricanes. “There’s no panic in our game. It’s just so much fun coming to the rink every day.”
Every team wants to “ignore the noise” and truly tune out its critics. Florida has successfully done it. The Panthers aren’t burdened by history. They are uniquely themselves. That ability to live in — and embrace — the moment should only continue driving Florida.
The maturation of Matthew Tkachuk
If you missed it when Matthew Tkachuk was in Calgary, the forward has grown a great deal since being pegged by some as a simple pest.
He may be a pest, but he’s actually a multifaceted one.
Tkachuk’s refusal to sign a long-term deal with the Flames last summer facilitated his being traded to Florida in July for Jonathan Huberdeau, the Panthers’ leading scorer in 2021-22, and top-four defenseman MacKenzie Weegar. Risky? Perhaps. But the Panthers made the move pay off.
Tkachuk drove Florida’s offense throughout a tumultuous regular season with a 40-goal, 109-point effort (ranking seventh in the NHL). He took center stage in willing the Panthers into the race for the final playoff spot with a late-season burst, leaning into the us-against-the-world mentality.
And he wasn’t hurting Florida by taking bad penalties or stirring the pot; Tkachuk was too busy putting pucks in the net.
He’s done that all postseason, and no goal was bigger than his game-winner with 4.9 seconds remaining in Game 4 that finished off Carolina and put the Panthers in the Cup Final. Tkachuk has nine goals and 21 points in 16 games, including the overtime winners in Games 1 and 2 against the Hurricanes. And sure, Tkachuk has been called for a penalty or two along the way, but he’s also been a dominating presence up front at times and come up with the required big plays. That’s what Florida has needed most from its Hart Trophy candidate.
Bobrovsky is back
He wasn’t Florida’s first choice as postseason starter. But Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t let that stop him from being the team’s finisher.
When the Panthers’ $10 million-a-year man in net went down with an illness in March, backup Alex Lyon took over the crease and went on an improbable 6-1-1 run that aided Florida in capturing that coveted postseason spot. Naturally, coach Paul Maurice tapped Lyon to start the Panthers’ series against Boston.
The journeyman went 1-1 into Game 3, when he gave up five goals on 30 shots and was replaced late in the third period by Bobrovsky. Maurice returned to Bobrovsky for Game 4, a loss for the Panthers, but stuck with the veteran anyway.
Bobrovsky then rang up three straight wins to end the series with Boston on a high note. He improved further in the second round, holding Toronto’s vaunted offense to only two goals per game. Bobrovsky became a real virtuoso in the conference finals, recalling his seasons in Columbus as a two-time Vezina Trophy winner while stymying Carolina’s shooters to the point of open frustration after a 1-0 blanking in Game 3. (Jesperi Kotkaniemi breaking his stick against a dressing room wall, anyone?)
Now Bobrovsky carries his impressive 11-2 postseason record, .935 save percentage and 2.21 goals-against average into his first Cup finals appearance. There’s no doubt Bobrovsky being on his game will be a huge factor for Florida.
Montour the minute-eater
It was critical enough for the Panthers’ chances that Brandon Montour craft a career-best regular season with 16 goals and 73 points.
Where the defenseman caught everyone’s attention, though was in logging 57:56 in Florida’s four-overtime victory in Game 1 against Carolina. That’s no small feat, and it spoke to the importance of Montour’s performance throughout the season — and his overall evolution.
Montour was previously a solid depth contributor whose best points total (37) came last year. That he would have a mammoth season in 2022-23 was far from preordained.
Montour has maintained his success throughout the Panthers’ postseason run, stabilizing the back end with a nightly dose of large minutes (averaging nearly 28 per game) and adding enough offensive contributions (six goals and nine points) to make Florida’s back end a real threat.
Speaking of the Panthers’ defensemen, their willingness to block shots in the series against Carolina was an undeniable difference-maker. In the first three games alone, Florida’s defense was credited with more than 30 blocked shots, and several came in the waning minutes of the 1-0 Game 3 win that put the Hurricanes in a stranglehold.
Pulling their weight for the Panthers
Aleksander Barkov has spent his whole 10-year career in Florida. Aaron Ekblad has been with the Panthers for all nine of his NHL seasons.
They have experienced regular-season success (including as President’s Trophy winners last season), but it has not translated to long postseason runs.
Until now.
Barkov and Ekblad have provided Florida with veteran savvy and maybe even a little perspective. They’ve been through the wringer with this franchise. They’ve answered the questions and wondered about the future. This is their time to enjoy the spoils.
These Panthers aren’t one-dimensional or overly reliant on a single aspect of their game. Florida rolls deep.
Ekblad has been a lynchpin on the blue line, bringing consistency and the same sort of stabilization Montour offers back there. Barkov has scored four goals and 14 points in his first 15 playoff games. Then there are the guys who don’t grab as many headlines.
Carter Verhaeghe is coming off an unheralded 42-goal regular season and has kept scoring timely goals in the playoffs, with three game-winners. Sam Reinhart has batted in two game-winners of his own. Sam Bennett has continuously aced his role as the ultimate set-up man.
And the list goes on.
Florida has beaten three teams that put too much stock into their so-called “best” players. The Panthers don’t require such designations. Florida operates more like an orchestra, where every instrument finds its moment to shine.
The Panthers are making beautiful music that way.
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.
The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.
Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.
“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”
Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.
The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.
“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.
For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.
Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.
“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.
The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.
The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.
“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”
This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.
“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.
“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The New York Yankees, digging for options to bolster their infield, have signed third baseman Jeimer Candelario to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the affiliate announced Saturday.
Candelario, 31, was released by the Cincinnati Reds on June 23, halfway through a three-year, $45 million contract he signed before the start of last season. The decision was made after Candelario posted a .707 OPS in 2024 and batted .113 with a .410 OPS in 22 games for the Reds before going on the injured list in April with a back injury.
The performance was poor enough for Cincinnati to cut him in a move that Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall described as a sunk cost.
For the Yankees, signing Candelario is a low-cost flier on a player who recorded an .807 OPS just two seasons ago as they seek to find a third baseman to move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base, his natural position.
Candelario is the second veteran infielder the Yankees have signed to a minor league contract in the past three days; they agreed to terms with Nicky Lopez on Thursday.
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