Capitals win 6-1 | The year of the Panthers? Maybe not, after all

In theory, and in theory only, this should be the year of the Florida Panthers.

Richard Labbe
The Press

The Panthers haven’t had much to smile about in recent years, and even in their lifetime, we’ll tell each other.

Apart from playing under the palm trees and having the luxury of going to the arena in flip-flops, Panthers players have not often had the right to happiness. It’s a good time to remember that the Sunrise club has only reached the first round of the playoffs once since its birth, in 1996, in the good old days of plastic rats and Scott Mellanby. It’s called a scarcity.

All that was to change this season, the season of all hopes in Florida.

The club finished the season in first place overall in the NHL, with 122 points, and in addition, several of its players had magical seasons, starting with Jonathan Huberdeau, who offered himself a season of 115 points. .

And what do we already say about players of this quality? They say they must be the best. Huberdeau of course opened the scoring on Saturday afternoon in Washington, with his first goal of the present series, but we will probably remember something else, that is to say his penalty for obstruction in the middle of the third period.

Already up 3-1 at the time, the Capitals took advantage of that power play to increase their lead by one goal. It was the end of broadcasts from this goal, achieved by Alex Ovechkin.

The Capitals now have a 2-1 series lead, and of course it’s not over. There are teams that have already slipped away from more comfortable leads, and everyone knows that the hardest victory to get is the fourth. Also, one can recall the wise words of Yogi Berra, who once said that it’s not over until it’s over.

But in the meantime, the Capitals have managed to do what they had to do at the start of the confrontation: sow doubt.

Recall that the Panthers finished the season with 22 points more than their Washington rivals. But now, on this pretty spring Saturday afternoon, all that meant nothing, even less after this victory for the Capitals by a score of 6-1. The result is important, yes, but there is always the way, and what we saw in this game number three was a correction, nothing less. After Jonathan Huberdeau’s goal, the Capitals have scored six straight…

Do the Panthers still have some gas in the tank? It will be necessary. These Capitals are tenacious despite the passage of time, and before the start of the playoffs, it was very tempting to bury them rather quickly. After all, it was the Panthers’ arrow that appeared to be pointing up, not the Capitals’.

Now, at this very moment, it doesn’t seem very clear, and the Panthers are, once again, in a weak position. It’s not too late for them, but at the same time, it’s starting to get a little rushed.