Panthers focus on tighter defense, better start vs. Maple Leafs in Game 5

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- It was a joke. It also was not a joke.

Before Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Second Round against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice was asked what he was looking for at the start from his team.

“Not a goal against,” he said.

The Maple Leafs had scored 33 seconds into Game 1 and 23 seconds into Game 3, putting the Panthers on the wrong foot from not long after puck drop.

So for Florida to put together the defensive effort it has built a winning pedigree on, it needed not to fall behind immediately.

“I think you saw it in Game 3,” Maurice said, of the defensive tide turning. “There’s a piece of that that came through in Game 3 after the first period, I thought. Some of it is -- I joked about it -- but getting through the first 35 seconds without giving up a goal has a pretty strong impact on how you feel the game’s going.

“Confidence is built in each game, or lost in each game, and you’re constantly trying to feel good about yourself and your game. But [darn], that’s a tough way to start two of those three games. So we were a little behind it.”

Not so in Game 4, a 2-0 victory that evened the best-of-7 series 2-2.

And partially as a result, the defensive effort the Panthers demonstrated in that game was what they had been trying to find since the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and it's what they'll shoot for again in Game 5 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, ESPN).

Finding that defensive game had been made more difficult by the type of teams Florida was facing in the playoffs; the Tampa Bay Lightning and Maple Leafs have some similarities in how they approach producing offense, and which were not necessarily optimal matchups for the Panthers.

As Maurice put it, “The first seven to 7 1/2 games of our playoff life this year has been against very dynamic teams in that kind of rush from one end to the other game. So we’re still learning how to adapt that to a hard-gap game.”

But they’re getting closer.

“The most difficult game to hard-gap is the game the two teams that we’ve played have played,” Maurice said. “So I’m hoping the adaptation process is continuing and we’re starting to get a hang of it, of when we can press and when we’ve got to pull off.

“But the gap is such a critical part to what we do. That is all we’ve talked about for three years -- the vast majority of what we’ve talked about. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about our offensive play. It’s almost all that. And I think we’ve been good at times. Game 4 would have been our best in terms of consistency through the three periods of looking the way we hope to. The other team gets paid too, and they have a lot to do with you not being able to set that gap.”

After allowing 13 goals in the first three games of this series, the Panthers gave up zero in Game 4. They kept the Maple Leafs to the outside, allowed just 23 shots on goal, including four in the first period. They contained a team that is nearly impossible to contain, and on the way pulled even in the series after dropping Games 1 and 2.

It’s a momentum -- though Maurice hates the term and the concept -- Florida will try to carry over into Toronto, in a series where the home team has won all four games so far.

Because even if momentum is a moot concept during a postseason series, the idea the Panthers have settled into their defensive structure, that they’ve figured out their gaps on a team that makes that difficult, is real.

“We’ve been talking about it. They’re a dynamic team with a lot of skill and speed,” defenseman Niko Mikkola said. “We need to have good gaps. It’s starting from the forecheck and how we put the pucks deep and I think we managed to do that pretty well last game.”

Owning proof they can do that helps -- with their confidence, with their play on the ice, with their ability to continue their title defense past the second round.

“We just tried to play as fast and as simple as we can,” forward Anton Lundell said. “Last game gave us a better result, but at the same time we know it’s going to be a hard battle going into their arena. It’s going to be loud, it’s going to be a new challenge for us, but we’re excited to face that.”