Bruins properly channel hatred of Panthers, and now it’s a series originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
For three games, the Bruins played the Panthers on Florida‘s terms. They scrummed after whistles, challenged the bench to fights, and ill-advisedly watched their best player drop the gloves before getting tuned up by a grandchild of Medford.
The Panthers laughed in their faces, filling the Bruins with the kind of rage typically reserved for the kid whose big brother smacks him with his own wrists and innocently asks why he keeps hitting himself. Your fury merely feeds their mockery.
Continue on that path in Game 5, and the B’s would scatter to the wind for the summer. So they changed course and stopped trying to beat the Panthers at the game the Floridians have perfected.
And now we have a series.
Boston’s 2-1 win was the first close game out of five, but don’t let the lopsided scores fool you. The two teams are producing great theater marked by visceral hatred, and as the series returns to Boston for Friday’s Game 6, the Bruins have finally learned their most important lesson – trying to retaliate for Florida’s various transgressions will inevitably end badly.
It’s so tempting, though, because the Panthers are one smug-ass team. Matthew Tkachuk, the aforementioned pugilist, looks like he’d sweep the leg for Cobra Kai without even being asked. Sam Bennett is to dirty play what Mark Zuckerberg is to ruining American discourse – by the time you realize what’s happened, it’s too late. Even head coach Paul Maurice acts like the Bruins are beneath him.
The Panthers are agitators and instigators and irritants, and they’re so much better at it than you. But that didn’t stop the Bruins from trying to engage in fruitless extracurriculars throughout Games 3 and 4; if I had to hear about “Big ol’ Paddy Maroon” basically begging someone to fight him like a desperate grizzly one more time, I might’ve taken a hammer to my TV.
There was none of that in Game 5. The Bruins jumped the Panthers early and then held on for dear life, needing a brilliant performance from goalie Jeremy Swayman, who stonewalled Sam Reinhart on the doorstep in the closing seconds.
The Bruins stopped meekly taunting the Florida bench, and they stopped jostling to fight before every other faceoff, which just isn’t their game. They instead took the body, laid out 49 hits, and otherwise shut up about it. After letting the Panthers take up collective residence in their heads for three games, they…