Panthers not changing approach against Oilers 1 win away from Cup | NHL.com

EDMONTON — Every piece of historical data available suggests the Florida Panthers will win the Stanley Cup.

“We don’t look at that stuff,” Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk said Friday. “You guys (the media) do. I’m sure a lot of other people do. But we don’t.”

OK fine, but Tkachuk and the Panthers can’t deny the odds are so heavily in their favor to become Stanley Cup champions, perhaps as soon as Saturday night, when they play Game 4 against the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, CBC, SN, TVAS).

Of the 28 previous teams that had a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 Stanley Cup Final, 27 went on to win the Cup, with 20 completing the sweep. The only detractor were the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, who came back to defeat the Detroit Red Wings. 

That was 82 years ago.

The only other time a series went from 3-0 to Game 7 was in 1945.

This is the 211th time a team has led 3-0 in a best-of-7 series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs; 206 of the first 210 that led the series won the series. 

The Oilers have never won a series they trailed 3-0. They’re 0-5 and all have ended in a sweep.

The Panthers have never lost a series they’ve led 3-0. They’re 4-0, including one sweep.

“It’s there for us, but you don’t think about it,” Florida center Aleksander Barkov said. “You can’t think about it.”

As hard as that might be considering human nature and all, it doesn’t matter that every piece of historical data is on the Panthers’ side. None of it will impact how they play in Game 4. In fact, the only thing it might do is affect how they prepare for Game 4.

So, to that end and to the surprise of no one, the business-like Panthers are putting all their energy and focus into not changing a single thing about how they prepare for a playoff game, which means, to Tkachuk’s point, not looking at the data or thinking about what a win in the next game means, even if a win in the next game means everything.

“We come into today, have a nice recovery day, do what you can to get ready for tomorrow,” Tkachuk said. “We’ve done such a good job of having that one game simple mindset. Win your first period, win your first few shifts. That’s all you’ve got to do tomorrow. It’s a really calm, kind of chilled, relaxed group today. Use that to our advantage.”

They did all of that after escaping Game 1 with a 3-0 win. They did it again despite some travel issues getting to Edmonton after a 4-1 win in Game 2. They’re doing it now after winning Game 3, 4-3, at Rogers Place on Thursday.

Go back a round and the Panthers one day at a time approach worked after losing Game 3 in the Eastern Conference Final to the New York Rangers to fall behind 2-1 in that series.

They haven’t lost since, winning six in a row. They’ve won 15 of the 20 games they’ve played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The approach works.

“We’ve got a structure for our day-to-day,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “We talk about this all the time, so this isn’t the first time they’ve heard it, ‘Handle your day.’ So we have a structure for that. And then tomorrow, you know, through the morning skate and the team meal and things, kind of move around the players and just kind of feel where they’re at.” 

But that’s where Maurice might find something out of the ordinary because at that time, particularly in the down time after the morning skate and before pregame warmups, is when the realization of what’s at stake, what they can become, might crystalize for the Panthers.

That may be why Maurice said he won’t ignore it, himself included.

“I won’t do it today, but I’ll take stock of where I’m at, where my thoughts wander to in this situation,” Maurice said. “Do I need to kind of rein myself in because if I’m going through that, there’s a chance someone in the room is going through it too. So, I’ll base a lot of what I’ll do and what I’ll say and how we act tomorrow by that.”

It will be new for most.

The only Florida players who have been in this situation, one sleep away from the day they can win the Stanley Cup, are Vladimir Tarasenko (2019, St. Louis Blues) and Carter Verhaeghe (2020, Tampa Bay Lightning).

Maurice never has been, although two of his assistants, Jamie Kompon and Sylvain Lefebvre have. Kompon was an assistant with the Los Angeles Kings when they won the Stanley Cup in 2012. Lefebvre won the Cup as a player with the Colorado Avalanche in 1996.

“If you’re asking me if I had to walk into the room right now and start this speech, I would acknowledge the fact that this is an elimination game in the Stanley Cup Final and not a lot of us have been through it, and just talk about it right away,” Maurice said. “But we’ll go back to what we know and at the end of the day, that’s why you handle your day. There’s nothing new to what we’re going to do. The puck is going to drop. It’s going to be the exact same sport. There’s nothing new here. The context is different.”