Stanley Cup Playoffs Day 32: Panthers kick off East Final with rout of Hurricanes

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are back, which means that for the next two months, we’ll get non-stop exciting action in the NHL as we witness history in another team looking to win a championship. Here at Daily Faceoff, we’ll be keeping you in the loop of everything that happened in the playoffs, every day until the Stanley Cup is hoisted in June.

The Conference Finals began on Tuesday with an extended rematch between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Florida Panthers, who last met in 2023, which saw the Hurricanes fail to get a win in the Conference Finals again with a sweep. And yet, they’re matched up against a much deeper and scarier Panthers team this time around. It was going to be a tough hill to climb.

The Panthers demonstrated just that in Game 1. While the game was scoreless for the early part of the first period, Carter Verhaeghe and Aaron Ekblad popped off for two goals in just under four minutes in the middle of the frame to give the Panthers the early lead.

However, the Canes got a response just before the end of the period, as Sebastian Aho redirected the puck off of his skate and into the net. It was initially looked at to see if there was a kicking motion involved in the goal, but it was deemed that Aho had merely adjusted his skate angle to get the puck past Sergei Bobrovsky.

The momentum didn’t last long for the Canes. A.J. Greer scored on an odd man rush for the Panthers to regain the two goal lead in the second period, and then the third period really hit garbage time, as Sam Bennett and Eetu Luostarinen made it a 5-1 lead. We did get a bit of a brawl between Shayne Gostisbehere and Brad Marchand, which was mostly notable because Gostisbehere either forgot or chose not to take off his gloves.

Jackson Blake got a late power play marker to make it 5-2, but that was as close as the Hurricanes would get to a comeback, and that would hold for the final score. The Panthers take a 1-0 lead in the series, and Carolina sees their losing streak beyond the second round extend to 13 games. Even more concerning for the Canes, Frederik Andersen had his worst game of the postseason, stopping just 15 of 20 shots in the loss.