FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The puck went into the corner, to the left of Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, with 14 seconds left in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
It never came out of that corner. And the Panthers will never forget what that meant.
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How Florida finished last season — how it ran the final seconds off the clock in its 2-1, title-clinching win over Edmonton — is how the Panthers started this season. Training camp for the Stanley Cup champions opened Thursday and one of the drills on Day 1 very much resembled those frantic final moments of Game 7, with the puck in the corner and players being put to the test.
“It was an unbelievable feeling,” Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen said. “I think every player lived for that moment and we're here to work for it.”
Edmonton was as desperate as could be in those final 14 seconds, trying anything and everything to get a shot off and potentially tie the game. The puck never got out of that corner. Luostarinen was on the ice for those moments a few feet away from the play, waiting to pounce just in case the Oilers somehow knocked it free. The four other Panthers skaters formed a human logjam, and when it was over the title was won.
“It's what we have to do well now,” Luostarinen said.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice preaches about the value of the little plays, like fighting for the puck against the boards. Sometimes, it'll lead to a goal. Sometimes, the Panthers now know, it can clinch a Stanley Cup title.
And those little plays were a theme before the champs took the ice on Day 1.
“We watched some of them before the first skate,” said defenseman Jaycob Megna, who was born in South Florida and joined the Panthers over the summer. “It’s just doing those habits that they did all year. It came to pay off when it mattered most.”
The first four days of practice — with more than 50 players in camp, practice is split into two sessions — will be almost the same as the first four days were last season, Maurice said. It's not superstition just because last year's camp was the start of a run to the Cup. It's just that the Panthers believe the process they follow works, so they're not changing it now.
“Certainly, you want to feel like you can add things to your game and grow your game and we still have lots of room. We have to feel that we can get better,” Maurice said. “The foundation of what we’re doing has not changed and we want to cement that right at the start as the single most important thing that we do.”
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AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL