Hurricanes losing mental, physical battle to Panthers in Eastern Conference Final

RALEIGH, N.C. -- It was never close, never in doubt from start to finish. It was everything you'd expect from a champion like the Florida Panthers and nothing you'd expect from a contender like the Carolina Hurricanes.

But if you're following the trend, the outcome of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final at Lenovo Center on Thursday and the team on top of the scoreboard, more than the 5-0 final itself, was not surprising. At this point, how can it be anything but expected?

The Hurricanes have lost 14 consecutive games in the conference final since 2009, but what matters presently is the past six have all come against Florida -- four in 2023 and two so far in 2025.

Each one has been worse than the last, but the first five were nowhere near as bad as what happened Thursday, when for the first time against the Panthers in the conference final Carolina looked flustered, overwhelmed and outmatched.

So, yes, at this point it's fair to question if the Panthers are not only winning on the ice, but if they're also imposing their will in the heads of the Carolina players. It's fair to question if the Hurricanes are questioning themselves, internally asking, "Can we beat this team?"

"This game is mental," Carolina captain Jordan Staal said. "I mean, it's all about the brain and your focus and the thoughts that can creep in. It's got to be the thoughts we've been thinking all year, and that's playing our game, focusing on our shifts and our battles and doing what we do. When you get those thoughts like that come in it never looks good. We've got to believe in the group that we have and what we've done all year and go steal one in Game 3."

The Hurricanes have been good enough for long enough under coach Rod Brind'Amour -- this is their third trip to the conference final since 2019 -- to be confident that they'll be at their best in Game 3 of this best-of-7 series at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on Saturday.

Nothing about Game 2 should fuel their belief, but it's still there, or so they say.

"Well, I mean, they (the Panthers) just went seven games against the (Toronto Maple) Leafs, right?" forward Taylor Hall said. "They're not a perfect hockey team, and we know that there's areas to exploit like any team. They're exploiting our weaknesses, obviously. We have to play our game and if we lose doing that, then sure.”

Hall is, of course, correct. The Hurricanes have to believe they can play their game against the Panthers, that they can beat the Panthers. Otherwise, what's the point?

The rest of us, though, we all can see with our own eyes that what's happening against the Panthers now, with the sweep in 2023 as the backdrop, is enough to spread doubt over what in the end might be misguided belief.

Game 1 on Tuesday was a 5-2 loss. The Hurricanes weren't bad. They said they didn't hate their game, that it was costly mistakes and power-play goals against that burned them. They felt they would be fine. They were confident. They still weren't close.

They planned to start Game 2 with energy, on their toes, hitting and forechecking and pressuring.

They instead looked unrecognizable, completely out of whack.

It was 3-0 Florida in the first period on goals by Gustav Forsling at 1:17, Matthew Tkachuk at 11:41 and Sam Bennett at 15:50.

Turnovers by Andrei Svechnikov led to the goals by Forsling and Tkachuk. His penalty for punching Tkachuk in the back of the head for no apparent reason led to Bennett's goal, the first of two in the game for the Panthers forward.

"I didn't know what I was watching in the first period, and that didn't go well," Brind'Amour said.

With the Hurricanes unable to find any footing for a comeback, especially after Sebastian Aho's would-be goal early in the second period was taken off the board because of a successful coach's challenge for offside, the strangest thing happened here.

Late in the second period, the fans turned on their team by derogatorily chanting: "SHOOT THE PUCK. SHOOT THE PUCK."

The Hurricanes are the NHL's shot-volume kings. No team shoots the puck more than they do. But the fans were right to implore their team to shoot it, because the Hurricanes weren't.

They overpassed the puck on the power play and ran out of time to make something happen at the end of the first period.

Seth Jarvis passed on a 2-on-1 with Aho when the shot was available with about 3:30 left in the second period. Scott Morrow passed to Mark Jankowski when he was low in the right face-off circle with the puck about 90 seconds later.

For a team that talked about the need to bear down on their chances, to finish them, it seemed they were more content passing them up instead.

"That's just not our game," Hall said. "That's just not how we play."

The Hurricanes were outshot 16-7 after 40 minutes, with Florida holding a 42-28 advantage in total shot attempts.

Those stats almost always favor the Hurricanes. That they didn't in the guts of Game 2 is all you need to know about how off they were, how different they were playing from their norm, and perhaps how nestled the Panthers are in their heads.

"Yeah, I think we're all a little bit at a loss," Hall said.