BOSTON (AP) – Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice saw his team escape one blow after another and still manage to eliminate the Boston Bruins in six games.
So he didn’t want to overanalyze the team’s second consecutive trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.
“Actually, part of it is luck,” Maurice said Friday night after Florida beat Boston 2-1 to win the second round playoff series. “We gave up four ‘A’ chances in the second period and we were lucky they didn’t go in.
“And that’s how I felt on the bench: I didn’t feel like I was in control; it didn’t feel methodical,” Maurice said. “Everybody had a plan and then they spent the next six games trying to punch each other in the face.”
Defender Gustav Forsling scored the tiebreaking goal with 1:33 remaining, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 22 shots to help the Panthers knock the Bruins out of the playoffs for the second year in a row.
The Panthers advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they will play New York Rangers. Game 1 will be Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.
“I’m not doing that. I’m not going to do anything with it,” said Maurice. “I need a day off.”
Anton Lundell scored for the Panthers and scored the winning goal when his shot was deflected into the left side of the net. Forsling came in and beat Jeremy Swayman on the short side.
“I didn’t see it happen. I only saw one other person react. It was incredible,” said Forsling, who scored 10 goals this season – one of them game-winning. “I’m not normally the guy who scores the winning goal; I’m out there trying to defend. It’s good to help your team win, but I’ll stick to defense.”
Florida has won all three games of this series in Boston and six straight playoff games at TD Garden. The Panthers also won the Record-breaking Bruins last year on the way to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Las Vegas Golden Knights.
“I would pay to watch Boston and Florida play. If we played 82 games, there would be nothing left of these men. But it is hard and fast, sometimes highly skilled and sometimes brutal and violent,” said Maurice. “It’s the best part of hockey, the Bruins series.”
Swayman stopped 26 shots for the Bruins. Pavel Zacha scored to give Boston a 1–0 lead late in the first period, but could not beat Bobrovsky again. In the series, the Panthers outscored the Bruins 198-135.
Florida tied it with seven minutes left in the second after a scramble in front of the Boston net that left DeBrusk on the ice. Lundell dove into the slot and passed the puck past Swayman.
With the game tied and about three minutes remaining, Aleksander Barkov blocked a David Pastrnak shot on an open network.
“Do you want to talk about the ups and downs of emotions at the bank? It’s a wide-open net and a legitimate blockade,” said Maurice. “We ended up scoring the goal. It’s a little chaos down there. … So it was quite a rollercoaster.”
Boston missed several chances to extend its lead in the second period, including a Pastrnak escape in the opening seconds.
“There are too many possible inflection points when you look at the Florida-Boston games for me to be arrogant in sitting here and saying ‘well, that’s how we did it.’ I have no idea,” said Maurice. “You could take the last six wins we’ve had and we could lose every one of them.”
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AP NHL Playoffs: It is https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Jimmy Golem, Associated Press
