Reason Behind Florida Losing at Home Stadium Revealed by Panthers Star

Funny thing how the Florida Panthers were being called the road kings all season, and then, to accentuate that fact, just lost game 4—which was a home game—of the Eastern Conference Final series to the Carolina Hurricanes 3-0, proving that perhaps they don’t only perform better on the road than most other NHL teams, but they perform better on the road than they do at home?

There is a reason sports psychology is such a specialized subject, and it perhaps has to do with how different circumstances affect different mindsets in potentially opposite ways! For most, it would seem like the obvious advantage is playing in a stadium you know like the back of your hand, surrounded by supporting fans who cheer every time you score and set hell ablaze every time you don’t, but the Florida Panthers seem to think differently, at least according to this recent postgame interview with Carter Verhaeghe and Seth Jones.

In the interview, Carter Verhaeghe was asked if he noticed anything different about the team on the road this year, in terms of their overall performance, to which he responded, “We want to play the same way at home and on the road.” Addressing the Game 4 loss at home, he then went on to add, “But being on the road I think things are simpler; we try and play a simple game, we know what to expect, that they’re going to come out hard, and I think that’s kind of what got us last night.”

Referring to game 4, Carolina’s goaltender Frederik Andersen made 20 saves and had his second shutout game of the season. Verhaeghe added that, “We weren’t playing as simple as normal, and, yeah, the road just kind of simplifies it and lets us play our game a little bit.”

So, clearly right now the Panthers are benefiting from their on-the-road tactics of “keeping it simple,” but will this be the case with game 5 in Raleigh? What if the Canes come back fully optimistic with a newfound confidence—after winning their first game in the Eastern Conference Finals in 19 years—and keeping it simple just doesn’t cut it anymore? Not when the stakes have been raised like this.

Will “keeping it simple” be enough to secure the Florida Panthers success in Raleigh against the Carolina Hurricanes?

According to MoneyPuck, Florida has an 87.9% chance of making the final, which means that the chances of Carolina completely turning things around now are slim. But anything can happen, and last year, 2 or 3 of the games that Florida lost when the Oilers came back the way they did were, in fact, road games.

But, lucky for Florida, game 5 of the series against the Canes is on the road again. In their last two on-the-road games at the Lenovo Center, they won by big margins, 2-5 and 0-5, respectively. And while Florida has spoken for a while about their on-the-road dominance, things were looking slightly different with three of their key players on a day-to-day reserve until just now.

It was just announced, as per Coach Paul Maurice, that all three players will be back for Florida’s road game against the Canes, and with everything Carter Verhaeghe just said, maybe the Panthers will come back stronger than ever. Surely the Panthers don’t want to draw this out into a seven-game series with the Oilers (most likely) awaiting them at the final.

So, Florida can go into the game thinking they’ll keep it simple, but Carolina will have to play with everything they have to hold onto their Eastern Conference winning streak for the first time in 19 years, and who’s to say which strategy will play out better on the day?

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