Brad Marchand and Sergei Bobrovsky proved again in the Florida Panthers’ 6-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night that hockey isn’t just a young man’s game.
The 37-year-old forward and almost 37-year-old goaltender continue to excel for the Panthers, who lead the best-of-7 series 2-1 with Game 4 at Amerant Bank Arena on Thursday. Marchand opened the scoring 56 seconds into the game, forcing the Oilers to spend the night playing catch-up. But they never caught up because Bobrovsky turned in another superb performance, making 32 saves and allowing only one goal — to the Oilers’ senior citizen, 40-year-old Corey Perry.
Florida’s oldest players (they were born about four months apart) are two of the biggest reasons that the Panthers are a couple of wins away from becoming the ninth franchise in NHL history to win back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.
Marchand keeps adding his name to the Stanley Cup Final record book.
His game-opening goal made him the oldest player in Cup Final history to score in each of the first three games, passing Hall of Famer Frank Mahovlich, who was 35 when he scored in the first three games of the 1973 Final for the Montreal Canadiens. He and Sam Bennett, who scored his playoff-leading 14th goal in the second period, became just the second set of teammates to open a Final with a goal streak of at least three games. The only other duo is Minnesota North Stars forwards Steve Payne and Dino Ciccarelli in 1981, although their team lost to the New York Islanders in five games.
“I’m enjoying every day here,” Marchand told TNT.
Marchand’s goal was also his second in less than one minute of playing time. He scored the game-winner at 8:05 of the second overtime in Florida’s 5-4 win in Game 2 before getting his team off to a fast start in Game 3 – and becoming the first player in the history of the Final to follow an overtime winner with an opening-minute goal in the next game.
“It was good to get one at home early,” said Panthers coach Paul Maurice, who made some history of his own by joining Scotty Bowman and Joel Quenneville as the only NHL coaches with 1,000 combined wins in the regular season and playoffs. “With the crowd in the building, that was very important for us.”
It was also the 11th time in this year’s playoffs that the Panthers have scored at least five goals in a game, something that hasn’t happened since the 1992 Pittsburgh Penguins did it.
“We have a very deep team,” Marchand said. “Not just deep offensively, but a lot of guys play a 200-foot game, and there are a lot of great leaders in this group as well. I think one of our strengths is the depth of the group.”
Marchand. Bobrovsky power Panthers past Oilers 6-1 in Game 3
Taking a lead before the game was a minute old got the crowd – and the Panthers – revved up.
“I just think for our group, we rally off that stuff,” Marchand told Sportsnet when asked about the effect his quick goal had on his teammates. “I think with any team, when you score early your confidence goes up a bit and you kind of start rolling. It’s nice to do it at home, but you don’t expect to do it every night.”
To say Marchand is making Panthers general manager Bill Zito look like a genius is an understatement. Zito acquired Marchand from the Boston Bruins prior to the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7, then waited another three weeks for him to get healthy. The GM’s patience has been rewarded in the playoffs; Marchand has 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists) in 20 games. His 11 career Stanley Cup Final goals are the most of any active player.
“The way that they’ve orchestrated this group and the lineup to play a certain way, you have to give credit to management,” Marchand said.
Though No. 63 is one of the League’s all-time greatest pests, he actually downplayed the penalty-fest in the third period.
“Emotions in all these games are really high,” he said. “This is the time of year you want to be playing, and you’re enjoying every minute of it. It doesn’t really matter what happened tonight; we both have to reset.”
As good as Marchand has been, Bobrovsky has been even better.
“Bob” didn’t face as much rubber Monday as he did in the first two games of the series, when he made 42 saves in each. He was only required to make 32 stops in Game 3 and wasn’t seriously tested as the game collapsed into mayhem in the third period.
However, he was superb in the first 30 minutes, when the outcome was still up in the air.
Perhaps his best save came less than five minutes into the game, when he robbed Connor McDavid from 15 feet out and then forced Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to fire wide on the rebound; both were part of a five-shot flurry within 30 seconds. He also made a terrific stop without a stick on Trent Frederic from close range midway through the second period.
“When it was 1-0, Bobrovsky made four or five key saves,” Wayne Gretzky said on TNT. “He made the saves they needed.”
Bobrovsky’s 116 saves (on 125 shots) are tied for the second-most through three games of a Cup Final. He’s even with Olaf Kolzig (116 for the Washington Capitals in 1998) and behind only Tuukka Rask (120 with the Bruins in 2013, when he was a teammate of Marchand).
“Nothing’s going to be perfect in the way we play,” forward Sam Reinhart said. “This time of year, you need some world-class goaltending and that’s what we get consistently.”