The Panthers were 53.2 seconds away from a Game 7 at home on Tuesday.
Instead, with the Islanders’ net empty for the extra skater their captain John Tavares poked in a juicy rebound to force the third overtime of the series. He then won it with 9:19 left in the second overtime to hand the Panthers a heart-crushing, devastating 2-1 loss and a 4-2 first-round series ouster in a rocking Barclays Center on Sunday night.
The last-minute tying goal was instigated by defenseman Nick Leddy, who sped around the Panthers’ defense before centering to Nikolay Kulemin. Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo, spectacular in defeat, made a sprawling save on Kulemin’s point-blanker, but the puck just sat in the crease begging Tavares to knock in his fourth goal of the series.
Seconds before Tavares’ goal it appeared that Panthers center Vincent Trocheck had a clear shot at the vacated net but was tripped without a call.
Not long after Reilly Smith’s riser clanged off the crossbar, Tavares raced up ice and followed his own rebound around the net for a wraparound to end the Islanders’ 23-year drought between playoff series’ victories.
Luongo played tough, especially in the first overtime session in which he made 15 of his 49 saves, but it’s hard to win when his team scores four goals in the final three games of the series.
The Islanders entered the extra session with an NHL-best 32-14 mark in playoff overtimes, while the Panthers have now lost eight in a row, including all three in this gruelling, taut series that featured five one-goal margin of victory games with the lone exception an empty-net goal away from making it all six.
So the franchise’s best regular season fails to extend past the first round of the playoffs for the fourth consecutive time covering 20 years and the Islander’s famine ends in their first postseason series in New York, home of Panthers owner Vinnie Viola, who witnessed this stomach-turning conclusion in person.
Tavares, playing like a man possessed, ripped off a backhander in overtime that caught Luongo in the facemask before bounding over the net. With 2:50 left in the first OT, Islanders rookie Alan Quine nearly won his second consecutive playoff-winning goal but his breakaway riser drifted wide.
It was Quine who ended the 96-minute Game 5 double-overtime marathon just two nights earlier. In the final minute, Luongo snatched Leddy’s rising laser to help forge overtime No. 2.
The Islanders have won their last nine close-out games when leading 3-2 in a playoff series and are 10-1 overall.
Down 1-zip after two, the Islanders came out pressing to win their first playoff series since 1993 (Penguins), as Luongo stoned Cal Clutterbuck on a point-blank blast.
The Panthers survived the Islanders’ early-game push and took over puck possession for most of the scoreless second period. With less than three minutes left in the frame, Luongo made back-to-back huge saves in traffic off shots by Calvin de Haan and Franz Nielsen to cling to a 1-0 lead after two with both teams notching 17 shots apiece.
The unusual trend of this evenly matched series continued in the first period in which the team that dominated play trailed 1-0 after one. The Islanders, perhaps buoyed by their boisterous crowd, came out with far more jump than the desperate Panthers.