Panthers Close Out Caps in OT, 4-3

Carter Verhaeghe scored at 2:46 of overtime to lift the Florida Panthers to a 4-3 win over Washington on Friday night at Capital One Arena. With the Game 6 victory, the Panthers have eliminated the Caps from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, winning each of the last three games of the best-of-seven series.

Verhaeghe supplied the game-winning goal in each of Florida's last three victories in the series, doing so in overtime in each of the last two games played in the District, Games 4 and 6. In Wednesday's Game 5 in Florida, Verhaeghe had a hand in all five Panthers goals with two goals and three primary assists, scoring the eventual game-winner early in the third period. He finished the series with six goals and a dozen points.
After missing Friday's morning skate because of an unspecified injury, Verhaeghe was termed a "game-time decision" for Game 6. His offensive outburst in this series helps Florida to its first playoff series win since 1996, snapping a string of six straight first-round exits for the Panthers, and handing the Capitals a fourth straight opening round exit.
"These things, you've got to go through them a few times to really get the feel of it," says Panthers interim coach Andrew Brunette. "You have to have heartbreaks and you have to have things that don't go your way, and you can find how hard it is, and understand it, and be resilient. And when you see the reward, like they saw tonight, it's all worth it."
Going into the series, few pundits gave the eighth-seeded Capitals any chance of upsetting the Presidents' Trophy-winning Panthers, but Washington battled hard throughout the six games, and could have won the series. After playing their best game of the series in Game 3, the Caps held a 2-1 lead in the set. They let a late lead slip away in Game 4's overtime loss, and they were up 3-0 in the second period of Game 5 - and they were all even at 3-3 in the third period of that game - before falling 5-3.
"We've been there almost every game," says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin. "We get the lead, and we blew it away, especially after 3-0 [in Game 5]. We gave them the chance to come back, and that's kind of hard. But you can see today was a huge battle. We get the lead, lose it, and tie the game. I didn't see the [Verhaeghe] goal; maybe a bad bounce or something like that. But a loss is a loss."
In Friday's elimination game, the Caps took a 2-1 lead early in the third on a Nicklas Backstrom goal, only to see the Panthers rally to leap ahead 3-2 with less than six minutes left. With just over a minute left in regulation, T.J. Oshie scored a power-play goal in a 6-on-4 situation to breathe life into the Caps, but it turned out to be a temporary stay of execution.
"They're a good hockey team that created a lot of offense for the entire year," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of the Panthers. "I thought we did a lot of good things tonight, a lot of the right things, trying to hold them at bay, and [they're] still able to generate.
"We just couldn't get it done. We had the lead, 2-1. We kicked it up, had to fight back; it was a huge effort at the end of the third to tie it up. We couldn't just close it out."
For the first time in the series, the Caps and the Panthers played a scoreless first period in Game 6. Each team successfully killed off one penalty in the first, and the Caps had the better of possession, high danger scoring chances and physicality in the first 20 minutes. Washington held the Panthers without a shot on net over the final seven and a half minutes of the first.
The two sides traded goals in the front half of the middle period. The Caps got on the board first, scoring a dozen seconds after winning a battle of a face-off in their own end. With help from his wingers, Nic Dowd bested Florida's Claude Giroux on the draw, and Johan Larsson carried up the left-wing wall and put the puck deep. Garnet Hathaway got to it first, and he centered it for Dowd, whose shot rang iron. But from a prone position, Dowd persisted, swatting the rebound past Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky for a 1-0 Washington lead at 3:44 of the first.
That one-goal lead would last less than three minutes, only until Ryan Lomberg tied it for the Panthers at 6:13 of the second, beating Ilya Samsonov on the rebound of a Patric Hornqvist shot.
There was some 4-on-4 hockey later in the second, and each team had a power play in the second, but the two teams went to the third all even at 1-1.
Early in the third, the Caps went back on top when Backstrom made a nifty deflection of a Justin Schultz wrist shot from the right point at 1:37.
The one-goal Washington advantage lasted a shade longer this time, until Giroux tied it up again with a transition goal at 8:18 of the third.
With about six minutes remaining, Dowd just missed giving the Caps a 3-2 lead; his shot off the rush glanced off the right post and out. Seconds later, Giroux made a play to Sasha Barkov just above the paint, and the Florida captain gave his team its first lead of the night, 3-2, at 14:17 of the third.
Late in the third, the Caps got Samsonov off for an extra attacker and began to put some heat on the Panthers in their end. Several good looks didn't produce an equalizer, but Washington caught a break when Panthers defenseman Gustav Forsling was incarcerated for tripping Backstrom at 18:51.
Six seconds later, the Caps were even. Backstrom bested Giroux on the draw, and T.J. Oshie got a shot toward the net. Anthony Mantha showed some strong hand/eye coordination to bat it down at the net front, keeping the puck in play in the front until Oshie managed to punch it in with just 63 seconds remaining.
With fewer than five seconds remaining in regulation, Ovechkin pounded a hard one-timer at Bobrovsky, but the Florida goalie made the stop, and the game went to overtime.
Once again, overtime didn't last long; this one was about half as long as the extra session in Game 4. Washington wasn't able to get a clean exit from behind its net, and Florida defenseman Ben Chiarot kept the puck in at the left point, pushing it down to Giroux below the goal line. The former Flyers' captain put a feed to the front for Verhaeghe, who went forehand to backhand before shoveling a backhander past Samsonov to give the Panthers their first playoff series victory since 1996 and sending the Caps home for the summer.
"The puck came around the wall, and I chipped it up," says Caps defenseman John Carlson of Verhaeghe's series-clinching strike. "And then the [defenseman] pinched in, flung it around and it went to the net."
Playing an 82-game schedule for the first time in three seasons, the Caps grinded their way to a 100-point season, despite never having all of their players healthy and available for any of those 82 games.
There's no shame in losing a six-game series in the first round of the playoffs to the best and highest scoring team in the League during the regular season. What stings the Caps about this series setback is that they hung right with the League's best regular season team for six games and could have won it, despite being heavy underdogs.
"Just looking at the series," says Backstrom, "we basically gave the series to them."
If Washington had been able to close out any one of these last three games, it would be headed to Florida for a decisive Game 7 on Sunday.
"The last three games I think have been in our hands at some point in the third [period], or some point in the game anyways," laments Oshie. "And we just weren't able to capitalize on those opportunities; we weren't able to shut the door.
"Obviously not a lot of time has passed, so there is still some reflection to do. But I'm super proud of the way the guys have battled all year, and this series was no different."