Third-Year Panthers Pluck Pens To Advance

One Lemieux down, one to go for the Florida Panthers, who can’t stop living hockey’s impossible dream.

Tom Fitzgerald and Mike Hough, nondescript players on a mostly starless team, scored key goals and Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr again didn’t, and the Panthers stunned the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-1 Saturday night in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Reaching the Stanley Cup finals in their third season of existence, the Panthers meet the Claude Lemieux-led Colorado Avalanche in one of least probable Cup finals in NHL history beginning Tuesday night in Denver.

“Our game plan was to fly west, not to go south, and we’re flying west,” said Panthers coach Doug MacLean, who designed the suffocating defense that so confused Lemieux and Jagr. “We were 500-to-1 odds to make the Stanley Cup, and I didn’t take that bet myself. I thought we’d make the playoffs, and that was about it.”

It will be the rats against the rookies - the Panthers’ rat-throwing fans against a franchise that relocated from Quebec to Colorado last summer.

“The Avalanche have a terrific hockey club, but if they think they’re going to have an easy series, this club is going to give them a fight,” Penguins coach Eddie Johnston said.

To get there, the Panthers won Game 7 the same way they dominated the series. They confused the NHL’s two leading scorers and got big goals themselves from unlikely sources.

Goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, a Penguins playoff whipping boy with a 0-5 record against them until this series, made 39 saves and will almost certainly be the MVP should the Panthers again defy history by winning the Cup.

“They had some chances and I had to push my heart back down because it was in my throat,” Vanbiesbrouck said. “We got it done. I don’t know how, but we got it done.”

Lemieux and Jagr came into the series each having scored 10 playoff goals. They had one each against the Panthers, and neither scored in the final five games. They never went more than two games during the season without scoring.

“I would never have believed that,” Johnston said. “Jagr had four or five breakaways the last three or four games, and you can almost always go to the bank that he’ll bury one or two of those.”

“To shut me down is one thing, but to do it against those guys is unbelievable,” Penguins forward Joe Dziedzic said. “We had them down 3-2, and to not bury them … it’s going to be a long summer.”

It will be a far longer season than expected for the Panthers, who beat the conference’s top two teams, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, to reach the finals.

“It was the best defense I’ve ever played against,” Lemieux said. “You’d beat one guy, and there were two others there.”

Hough provided a huge motivational lift by scoring the opening goal at 13:13 - a time that proved an ominous omen for the Penguins, who have lost three of their last five Game 7s at home.

Fitzgerald gave them another, answering Petr Nedved’s tying goal in the third period by powering a seemingly harmless slap shot from just inside the blue line by goaltender Tom Barrasso at 6:18 of the third.

Fitzgerald has scored five of six career playoff goals against Pittsburgh, with two coming as the New York Islanders rallied from a 3-2 deficit to upset the Penguins in 1993.

“We have a team rule that we’re not allowed to go blue to blue line,” Fitzgerald said. “I kind of lost my head for a minute. I got to the blue line and just put a shot on net. It went off (Neil) Wilkinson’s stick and went through the net. I couldn’t believe it went in.”

Neither could the Penguins.

“But Florida deserves to be where they are,” Johnston said. “We couldn’t get a pea by Vanbiesbrouck.”

The Panthers are the 14th team in NHL history to win a series after trailing 3-2, with four doing it against Pittsburgh: the Islanders in 1975 and 1993 and Philadelphia in 1989. The Penguins are 0-4 in Games 7s when they lost Game 6.

“This is unbelievable, and I mean unbelievable,” Panthers owner Wayne Huizenga said.

Panthers 3, Penguins 1

Florida 1 0 2 - 3 Pittsburgh 0 0 1 - 1

First period-1, Florida, Hough 4 (Svehla, Skrudland), 13:13.

Second period-None.

Third period-2, Pittsburgh, Nedved 10 (Lemieux, Jagr), 1:23 (pp). 3, Florida, Fitzgerald 3 (Murphy), 6:18. 4, Florida, Garpenlov 4 (Lindsay, Carkner), 17:23.

Shots on goal-Florida 12-7-9-28. Pittsburgh 10-12-18-40.Powerplay opp.-Florida 0 of 3; Pittsburgh 1 of 4.Goalies-Florida, Vanbiesbrouck 12-6 (40 shots-39 saves). Pittsburgh, Barrasso 4-5 (28-25).A-17,355 (17,181).