SUNRISE, Fla. -- This was not part of the Florida Panthers' script for the Winter Classic.
Their two-goal lead with less than five minutes to play Tuesday night fizzled quickly, and before long the Panthers were on the wrong end in overtime, losing 3-2 to the Montreal Canadiens at Amerant Bank Arena.
Yes, the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic is Florida's next game on the schedule, but the matter at hand minutes after Nick Suzuki scored his power-play goal 3:24 into overtime was hard to move past so quickly.
"I'm going to grumble for a while and find a way to be in a good mood in two days," Panthers coach Paul Maurice said.
He will. They all will. There's too much going on now for the Panthers to be sour for too long.
Around here they've been talking about the Winter Classic and playing the New York Rangers at loanDepot park in Miami since the game was first announced on Jan. 8, 2025.
Momentum toward it has been building and these last two Panthers home games, a 5-3 win against the Washington Capitals on Monday and the OT loss to Montreal on Tuesday, were the last steps on the runway to the biggest regular-season hockey event in South Florida.
It's finally going to happen Friday (8 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SNW, SNO, SNE, TVAS), and a one-point loss in their 39th game of the season is not going to dampen the Panthers' excitement about what these next few days will be like.
"It truly is a wonderful thing to experience," Maurice said. "When we get to that event, we want to make sure we take it all in and enjoy it. This is one of the great events for a hockey team … You don't want to be thinking about your last game."
So, they won't, and maybe because the Winter Classic is next on the schedule the Panthers also won't have time to reflect on the missed point against Montreal.
"They're opportunities that don't come around very often," said forward Brad Marchand, who will be playing in his fourth outdoor game. "They tend to be kind of crazy, a lot of mayhem, but they're moments that you look back in your career and they're some of your favorite times, the ones you always go back and talk about. So, it'll be a great opportunity for everyone."
Like everyone else, Marchand said it's the environment that they'll be playing in that intrigues him the most.
"It's not often you get to play outdoors in a climate like this," he said. "It's obviously very easy to do in very cold climates where they typically take place, but this will be very unique."
Eetu Luostarinen said his family back home in Finland is intrigued about a hockey game in a baseball stadium a few miles from where the Atlantic Ocean waves crash to surfers' delight.
"They definitely haven't seen anything like that," the Panthers forward said. "Obviously, nobody really has seen that."
It is happening now because in large part of the Panthers success. They are back-to-back Stanley Cup champions and have gone to the Stanley Cup Final three straight seasons.
As a result, hockey, as Marchand said, has grown immensely in the South Florida region.
Maurice on Monday was talking about kids he sees in the area now who talk about wanting to be like Marchand and Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk. He sees the crowds in the stands at home games but also in the rinks around here.
He called the Winter Classic "part of a real good give-back for our fans."
Close to 40,000 are expected to be at loanDepot park, although some will, of course, be Rangers fans who have either traveled here from the Northeast to get out of the cold and attend the game or are former New Yorkers living here full time.
Regardless, the fact that thousands of fans will descend on the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami to attend a hockey game is telling.
"It's just a great opportunity to continue to grow (the game)," Marchand said. "Especially down here the last few years hockey has really taken off. You can see the support the fanbase has for the team and in the group. Just another great opportunity."
What makes it even better is how the Panthers have been playing in the past month, notwithstanding the disappointing overtime loss Tuesday.
Missing Barkov and Tkachuk because of injuries, they were slogging along as a .500 team through the first two months, the holders of a 12-12-2 record after a 2-1 overtime loss against the Nashville Predators on Dec. 4, tied for last in the Atlantic Division.
They're 9-3-1 since, good enough to be in fourth place in the division on the last day of 2025, just four points behind the first-place Detroit Red Wings, and now with Tkachuk on the mend and likely to play soon, though probably not in the Winter Classic.
"There's always that belief that we can come back and everybody knows we're still missing half our team too," Marchand said. "It's just about getting back to playing our game, getting in that groove again and understanding the way we need to play to have success. We're doing that a little better lately."
They didn't follow the script Tuesday, but come Friday, when the Panthers are skating under the dark Miami night sky, playing the Rangers in the Winter Classic, they'll have forgotten about this loss to Montreal because the moment will be too awesome to even care about it.
"You want to take it all in and enjoy it, put on a good show for the fans," Maurice said. "You want to play well for sure. By the time the puck drops, we certainly want to be there mentally, that we are into a hockey game. But it's not going to look like anything we normally do and for some guys it will be the only one they ever play. You want to make sure you appreciate it."
