Tkachuk is rocking the playoffs, around the clock

The Panthers' star ends Game 1 of the Eastern finals late in the fourth overtime.

Nothing good ever happens at five minutes until 2 a.m., which is just one of the assumed truths that Matthew Tkachuk is destroying.

The Florida Panthers weren’t substantial enough to make the NHL playoffs. The Boston Bruins were impregnable. The Toronto Maple Leafs were, finally, touched by the hands of the hockey gods. Tkachuk has shined a harsh light on all those assumptions, borrowing the one from behind the net.

Four hours before the morning traffic began to gather in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Tkachuk wired a shot past Frederik Andersen, and the Panthers won Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final, 3-2, with 13 seconds left in the fourth overtime. 

He ended the sixth longest game in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and after he scored he howled his way through a tunnel and into the locker room at RBC Arena. The only other  ice he wanted to touch was in a machine at the hotel.

Tkachuk got the chance because Game 1 lasted long enough to explore all possibilities. Carolina’s Jaccob Slavin lost the puck in the neutral zone. Brent Burns found it deep in his own territory, and his attempt to backhand it to safety was dug out by Florida’s Sam Bennett, who quickly whisked it to Tkachuk.

Slavin and Burns had been the best defense pair in the entire playoffs so far. They had been on the ice for 13 Carolina goals in 5-on-5 situations and given up only four. They weren’t supposed to be the proximate cause of Carolina’s fourth loss of the playoff season, but their arc coincided with Tkachuk’s, and guess which one bent? Tkachuk’s goal was the sixth of his postseason, as if numbers alone could explain him.

It was a rousing launch of the Final Four, in a very equatorial Stanley Cup playoff. The other conference final is Vegas vs. Dallas, beginning Friday night. Of the four sites, Vegas is the northernmost. Florida and Vegas are expansion teams; Carolina and Dallas greeted franchises that fled Hartford and Minnesota. Only the Hurricanes have won a Stanley Cup, and that was in 2006, a 7-gamer over Edmonton. Their other trip to the Final was 2002, a loss to Detroit, featuring current coach Rod Brind’Amour as the captain and star center, and Paul Maurice as the coach. Now Maurice, who gave up the Winnipeg job during the 2021-22 season, is in his first year in charge of Florida.

The Panthers were down 3-1 in the first round to Boston when Tkachuk won Game 5 in overtime. Following his devil-may-care example, they won Games 6 and 7, too. Toronto was coming up its first series win since 2004 when the Panthers invaded its lair and won Games 1, 2 and 5, clinching the second round in the nerve center – and nervous center – of the sport on Friday night.

This is more of a surprise than it should be. The Panthers won the Presidents Trophy last season, with the best regular-season record in the league. They lost to Tampa Bay in the second round. Florida fired coach Andrew Brunette, who was subbing for Joel Quenneville, who had resigned after the Kyle Beach scandal that happened during his tenure in Chicago.

Then general manager Bill Zito, recognizing the Panthers were all (Alexander) Barkov and no bite, swapped high-scoring Jonathan Huberdeau and defenseman Mackenzie Weegar to Calgary for Tkachuk, who is famous for finishing his chirps and his checks. As a kid he provoked Kings’ defenseman Drew Doughty into slashing penalties, and Doughy responded by slashing Tkachuk. Edmonton’s Zack Kassian also let Tkachuk under his skin.

These days, the son of Keith Tkachuk (538 NHL goals, 2,219 penalty minutes) is more than just a peace disturber. In the final 16 games of the season he had 12 goals, giving him 40 for the year and 109 points. The Panthers were just above or just below the playoff line for much of the year, and were three points below it when they lost to Ottawa, 5-2, on March 27. (Matthew’s brother Brady scored two goals for the Senators in that one).

After that, 30-year-old rookie Alex Lyon replaced the ailing and inconsistent Sergei Bobrovsky in goal, and Florida reeled off seven consecutive wins, slipping into the playoffs when Pittsburgh lost to eventual lottery winner Chicago.

Fifteen players from that 2022 machine were on this Panthers’ roster, except this time the pressure was gone, and a fearless personality was in charge. Meanwhile, Huberdeau never could get in the same library, let alone on the same page, with coach Darryl Sutter, and Calgary missed the playoffs altogether (and then fired Sutter). Tkachuk, having signed an 8-year extension with Florida worth $76 million, can be the face, bicep and snarl of this franchise for the rest of the decade. The Panthers’ attendance rose 16 percent in their Sunrise, Fla. arena, to 16,682 per game.

But Tkachuk wouldn’t be as dominant without Bobrovsky, who makes $10 million through the 2025-26 season. That was pretty much the consensus choice for Worst Contract in the NHL, as long as Bobrovsky was negotiating with pucks instead of stopping them. He was supposed to give way to Spencer Knight this season, at some point. Knight, unfortunately, is in the NHL Player Assistance Program, but Lyon began the playoffs over Bobrovsky. That changed after Game 3 of the Boston series.

It was time for Bobrovsky, 34,  to show why God laughs when people say they understand goaltending. He is a two-time Vezina Trophy winner, after all, and in 2019 he supervised Columbus’ four-game sweep of Tampa Bay, which had almost as historic a regular season as the 2022-23 Bruins. 

Here, Bobrovsky gulped 63 Carolina shots on goal, which gave him 113 saves in the past two games and made him the third goalie in playoff history to save 50 or more in consecutive games.

There was the usual statistical debris you’d expect in such a marathon dance. Five defensemen played more than 50 minutes, topped by the Panthers’ Brandon Montour (57:56), who was plus-3 and turned in 51:52 of ice time in even strength situations. The Hurricanes launched 145 shots that either got to the net, missed it or were blocked, the Panthers 126, although Florida had 35 shots on goal in the overtimes to Carolina’s 27 and outscored the hosts 3-0 in 5-on-5 play.

Barkov, who is bidding to become the first Finnish-born captain to win a Stanley Cup, took 55 faceoffs and won 30. Carolina’s Jordan Staal, who is facing brothers Eric and Mark on the other side, took 51 faceoffs and won 28. Burns, at 38, blocked 10 shots for the Hurricanes, who had 39 blocks to Florida’s 38.

To be sure, the teams began to look like tractor-trailers climbing mountain roads near the end of each overtime. The spirit was willing but the legs were numb. That’s the problem with endless overtimes. Teams become fearful of penalties and thus tiptoe across the red line, and the speed and the physicality both disappear. It also causes collateral fatigue in a series where the games are played every other day. That’s why Brind’Amour called it “the worst way to lose.”

Maybe 10-minute overtimes would be more brisk. Maybe it’s time to maybe….consider….discuss…propose…4-on-4 hockey in overtime (ducks for cover). And maybe it’s not a problem at all. This was the first game of this playoff season that has ventured past two overtimes.

Tkachuk, for one, seemed comfortable with exhaustion.He was the first Panther on the ice and the first man to leave it. In St. Louis, where Keith was playing at the time, Matthew was a Chaminade College Prep classmate of Jayson Tatum, the Boston Celtics’ star. If things go a certain way, there might be double trophies on display at that high school gym next month. A tip: Let Tatum go first. It’s tougher to get Tkachuk off stage.