Defending champions hope past experience helps them advance to East Final again
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Perhaps the best words that Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice has ever heard in the situation he and his team now find themselves in — a must-win game, though not in that case, a Game 7 — came all the way back, back when Maurice was coaching in juniors, for the Memorial Cup.
“He said, ‘Fellows, we’ve got to win tonight because this is probably going to be a bunch our’s last game of organized hockey,'” Maurice recalled. “I thought that was an awesome line. Oh, man. And it was, right? You play major junior, there’s a bunch of 19-year-old guys that aren’t going to turn pro and that was it, that was their last game. I thought that was pretty good. They didn’t win, though.”
It’s been decades since that game, a lifetime of hockey that has taken Maurice from the Ontario Hockey League to the NHL. And, well, the sentiment isn’t exactly applicable to an NHL team filled with players under contract.
And yet, isn’t that the key to a Game 7? Play like it’s the last game you might ever play?
The Panthers find themselves back here, back in a Game 7, this time in the Eastern Conference Second Round against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They failed to win Game 6 on Friday at Amerant Bank Arena, shut out 2-0, with a chance to close out the Maple Leafs, and now sit tied in their best-of-7 series.
They are guaranteed one more game this season, on Sunday, at Scotiabank Arena (7:30 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
It’s a situation they’re familiar with, having played in two over the past two Stanley Cup Playoffs, in the first round against the Boston Bruins in 2023 and in the Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers in 2025, winning each.
“You want to win in four, you do, 100 percent,” said Maurice, who is 5-0 coaching Game 7s. “But the Game 7s, you’ll remember. Those are the ones that, there are not a lot of them, the further into the playoffs, the more intense they are. But there’s a freedom in Game 7 that’s not anywhere else. On both teams, you’ve got guys dealing with stuff, physical stuff, and they will say, ‘I’ve just got to play one more game.’ Now if they get to play one more game after that, they’ll deal with that then. But in the moment, in the warmup, whatever they’re dealing with becomes far more mentally manageable, so everybody goes and everybody goes hard.
“There’s a freedom to Game 7 that, it’s not like any other. Both these teams, I don’t know, they’ve kind of earned it. They’ve earned the right to go flat-out as hard as they can and enjoy the process of it.”
Each team has led in this series. The Maple Leafs went up 2-0, winning both games at home in Toronto, before the Panthers won three straight. Toronto then came back to win Game 6 and force the decisive game.
“You’ve got to bring all of your emotion and intensity and focus to that game,” Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “We’ve obviously done it before, so just draw on those experiences and bring whatever you can to the game.”
The Maple Leafs have their own Game 7 experience, having played in one last season — losing to the Bruins in the first round — and another in 2022, also losing in the first round, to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I think the more times you’ve been in a situation, the more comfortable you’re going to feel, from going through it together countless times, it’s comforting, you know what you’re going to expect out of the guy next to you,” forward Sam Reinhart said. “And that’s his best at a time like this. We’re excited for another opportunity to play another big game like this.”
Should the Panthers win, they would advance to the Eastern Conference Final for the third consecutive season with the chance to win the Stanley Cup in back-to-back seasons. It’s the fifth straight postseason in which the defending Cup champions have been forced — or forced — a Game 7, the longest such run since a six-year stretch from 2009 to 2014.
Whatever happens, the Panthers are facing a win-or-go-home scenario, a must-win game that brings with it the ability to play like there’s no tomorrow, much like those Memorial Cup kids all those years ago. Though, of course, they hope the result turns out differently.
“At the end of the day, we grow up dreaming of Game 7s and especially no bigger than the Game 7 where Sam scored that goal,” Ekblad said, referring to the second-period, game-winning goal that Reinhart scored in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season. “So, yes, we feel the pressure, obviously, but the motivation and the pride that you have in coming to the rink excited to play, it just second to none.
“It’s a full-body tingling experience when you get onto the ice for the first time — home or away, the crowd’s going absolutely bananas. You feed off that energy. It’s exciting.”
