In their season finale, the Florida Panthers came up short as they fell to the New Jersey Devils in overtime.
In the past few years, the Florida Panthers have normally come out of their regular seasons with strong wins.
Whether it was three years ago against the Carolina Hurricanes, two years ago against the Washington Capitals, or last season against the Boston Bruins, the Cats always seem to come up on top to close their seasons. Tonight, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
In the season finale of the 2018-19 season, the Panthers would faceoff against the New Jersey Devils. Just like the Panthers, the Devils are a team that had expected more out of their team this year but didn’t quite live up to those expectations.
So, it was a game to just play out and try to leave with a win. But for the Cats, it was more than just a normal game.
Aside from it being the usual Fan Appreciation Night presented by Walmart and possibly Roberto Luongo’s last game as a Panther, there was one thing the Panthers were chasing for, more specifically, their captain: the record.
Aleksander Barkov has chased Pavel Bure for the most points in a single regular season for the Florida Panthers. They went into tonight sharing the record at 94 points each. The main goal for the Cats was to give Barky his 95th point of the season.
The first goal was scored by the Devils as Nico Hischier led a 2-on-1 rush to throw it across to Nathan Bastian, who easily beat Luongo.
Later in the first, Drew Stafford deflected the puck into the net, but the goal was disallowed because the puck was deflected over the crossbar. This would be all the action for the first period as the Panthers went into the locker room trailing by one.
The second period wouldn’t start any better for Florida as they would for sure go down by two goals when Bastian tipped a puck in front for his second of the game.
The puck was sled across by Egor Yakovlev as Denis Malgin sat in front of the net with a clueless look on his face. The Panthers were digging a real hole for themselves and they needed to wake up. They eventually did, and they did it in the best way they could have.
After receiving a pass to lead a 2-on-1 for the Panthers, Aleksander Barkov did it. He slid the puck through the five-hole of MacKenzie Blackwood to tally his 35th of the season and more importantly, the record.
Barkov now was in possession of the best scoring season in the history of the Panthers, and the crowd let him hear it with a standing ovation.
If it seemed that things were too good to be true, it was. The Devils, a few minutes later, got another goal and it was a pretty one.
As he danced around and broke the ankles of Aaron Ekblad, Pavel Zacha curled the puck to lift it over Luongo’s pad. This extended Jersey’s lead to two once again, and that’s how we ended the second period.
The third period would bring a new element to this season’s finale: violence. It all started with Josh Brown dropping the gloves and throwing down a Devils player. Even though this was followed up with all sorts of brawls, this seemed to be the main turning point for Florida.
As we approached five minutes to go in the game, Jonathan Huberdeau would have something to say about that.
The extremely patient play behind the net by Evgeni Dadonov would pay off as he sauced a pass to Huberdeau to cut the lead in half. Although people started to depart from their seats, the Cats knew they weren’t done yet.
After a pile of bodies crowded the net looking for the puck, one Panther made it seem easy to find it. Mike Hoffman jumped into the mix to find the rebound and tie the game with 1:25 to go in regulation.
This brought the crowd to their feet to hope for a Panthers win. But as regulation would come to a close, the Panthers couldn’t end on a positive.
With 0.08 seconds remaining on the scoreboard, Huberdeau shot the puck straight over the glass with the puck not deflecting off of any object. He would head to the box and the Devils would get a full power play to start the overtime period.
As overtime started, things wouldn’t take long for the game and the season to come to a close. As Travis Zajac took a pass from the point, he beat Luongo on the blocker side to end the game.
Even with such a hard-fought win full of history and resilience, the Panthers couldn’t quite complete the late comeback.
Even though it was an incredible game, it was upsetting to see the Florida Panthers lose their season finale to the New Jersey Devils. It was a night full of everything you could ask for in a hockey game, but it’s sad to see the season end like this. The positive of tonight is that everyone can now sit back and relax as the Panthers will now begin a busy offseason to prepare for next season.