All of a sudden, Eeto Luostarinen shot the puck, and there was just one game left for the Florida Panthers to win, the one that can make them repeat champs, the one that could come Tuesday in Game 6 back in Sunrise.
Luostarinen sent the puck bouncing and rolling nearly the full length of the ice in the final stretch of Game 5 Saturday night. And when it went in the empty net to seal the 5-2 win against the Oilers, the Panthers could do something they hadn’t all night.
Breathe. Enjoy. And look ahead. Two games left. They need just one. And what a view it will be Tuesday night with the Stanley Cup entering Amerant Bank Arena, as it does only when one team is ready to skate off with it.
This long Panthers season becomes the shortest season after a game in which the offense again started with Brad Marchand (two goals) and Sam Bennett. They made it 2-0 after the first period. Marchand then bobbed through three Edmonton defensemen and slipped the puck by goalie Calvin Pickard to make it 3-0 in the third period.
That, of course, was the most dangerous lead of all if you just look back to their losing that exact lead in the previous Game 4 where Edmonton evened the series. The question with just one day off before Game 5 was simple enough:
How would the Panthers respond? Who would come through?
It was everyone, everywhere, especially in a clinic of Panthers defense. Goalie Sergei Bobrovsky had his good moments, his big saves — none better than the one on Connor Brown’s semi-breakaway 31 seconds into the game.
But that full defense. Edmonton went 14 minutes over the first and second periods without a shot on goal. It had 11 shots midway through the third period. Then Connor McDavid scored to make it 3-1, Edmonton fans came alive, they saw a historic repeat of erasing that Panthers lead and …
… Sam Reinhart’s goal made it 4-1.
So, the Panthers had an answer for everything this night. That was McDavid’s first goal of the series. That tells of the job the Panthers are doing on defense. Marchand (six goals this series) and Bennett (five) are showing you their offense game after game.
They became the first teammates to score five goals each in a final series in 52 years. Bennett has 15 playoff goals, 13 on the road, where, let’s face it, the Panthers have a second home.
They’re 2-1 in Edmonton this series.
They’re 10-3 on the road these playoffs.
This series has no neat pattern, no easy conclusion through five games. There’s been some surprises, like the best player on each team, McDavid and the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov, hadn’t scored a goal in the series’ first four games. The Panthers would take a continuation of that trade-off since Barkov’s prime job is keeping McDavid scoreless.
But each team has won on the road. Each team has rallied from slow starts — Edmonton more so. Each team has shown signs of breaking the series open only to be unable to maintain that threat.
A year ago, with Edmonton facing elimination, McDavid said the hope of a game in South Florida was to “drag them back to Alberta.”
It’s a same-time-next-year moment. Edmonton needs a win to get a Game 7 back in Canada. To do so, it’d better solve a goaltending question. Switching goalies, as it’s done through this series, isn’t a common formula to win big.
The Panthers just need a win, any win. Matthew Tkachuk has said the most nervous he’s been in years was for last year’s Game 4, the first one they could clinch the Stanley Cup. But Sam Bennett said they were all so excited at winning last year they had trouble sleeping before those final games.
“I think since we’ve been through it we’ll deal with it better,’’ he said.
The Panthers need just one win to repeat as champs. Just one. Tuesday in Game 6 is the first chance, and what a night it would be, celebrating with their fans for a second straight June.