Panthers vs. Bruins: the Game 7 comeback that flipped a rivalry

One minute left in regulation. Game 7. TD Garden, April 30, 2023. The Boston Bruins lead the Florida Panthers 3-2, and the best regular-season team in NHL history is 60 seconds from the second round.

Florida pulls Sergei Bobrovsky for an extra skater. Aleksander Barkov shoots and Patrice Bergeron, who missed the first five games of the series and came back for the last two, blocks it. Brandon Montour finds it in the left circle and buries it. 3-3, at 19:00 of the third period.

Eight minutes and 35 seconds into overtime, Sam Bennett wins a puck battle behind the Boston net and slides it to Carter Verhaeghe. Wrist shot from the right circle, past a screened Jeremy Swayman. Panthers 4, Bruins 3. Series over.

That one shift changed two franchises. Sunday, the Panthers are back at TD Garden, and the rivalry it started is still running.

The best season ever, and a 3-1 lead

The 2022-23 Bruins were not just good. They won the Presidents' Trophy and set NHL regular-season records with 65 wins and 135 points. Florida got in as the second wild card in the East, 43 points behind them.

The series went the way the standings said it would, at first. Boston won Game 1 3-1. Florida answered with a 6-3 win in Game 2, but the Bruins went to Sunrise and took both games there, 4-2 and 6-2, for a 3-1 series lead. Along the way, Florida coach Paul Maurice changed goalies: Bobrovsky came on in relief of Alex Lyon in Game 3 and started every game after that.

Here is the detail that made the next week so strange. Boston had not lost three games in a row all season.

Three straight

Game 5, in Boston, was Bobrovsky's game. He made 44 saves on 47 shots, and Matthew Tkachuk ended it on a backhand at 6:05 of overtime. Panthers 4, Bruins 3.

Game 6, back in Florida, was chaos. Jake DeBrusk scored shorthanded at 10:22 of the third to put Boston up 5-4. Tkachuk tied it on the power play 27 seconds later. Eetu Luostarinen scored the go-ahead goal at 14:22, Sam Reinhart added an empty-netter, and Florida won 7-5.

Then Game 7. Montour scored on the power play in the first period and Reinhart made it 2-0 at 1:14 of the second. Boston pushed back. David Krejci scored on a power-play one-timer at 7:52 of the second, Tyler Bertuzzi tipped in another power-play goal 55 seconds into the third, and David Pastrnak put Boston ahead 3-2 at 4:11 on a rebound. Swayman, in his first start of the series in place of Linus Ullmark, made 27 saves. Bobrovsky made 33.

Then came Montour at 19:00, and Verhaeghe at 8:35 of overtime.

NHL.com noted that the 43-point gap was the second-largest in a playoff series upset, behind only the 1982 Los Angeles Kings, who upset an Edmonton Oilers team that had finished 48 points ahead of them. Tkachuk put it more simply afterward, telling the AP: "Nobody in the whole world thought we were going to win that series except for the guys in that room."

The rematch, and the captain who switched sides

Florida rode that win all the way to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, where it lost to Vegas. A year later, the two teams met again in the second round, and the Panthers won that one too, in six games. They closed it out 2-1 in Boston on May 17, 2024, when Gustav Forsling scored with 1:33 left. Florida won all three games in Boston that series, outshot the Bruins 198-135, and ran its playoff win streak at TD Garden to six straight.

Maurice summed up the matchup in one line after Game 6, as the AP reported: "I would pay money to watch Boston and Florida play."

Then the rivalry took its biggest turn. On March 7, 2025, the Bruins traded their captain, Brad Marchand, to Florida. Marchand had spent his entire 16-year career in Boston, won the Cup there in 2011 and worn the C for the previous two seasons. He was headed for free agency and the sides could not agree on an extension. Boston kept 50% of his salary and got a conditional pick that could become a first-rounder.

Three months later, on June 17, 2025, Florida beat Edmonton 5-1 in Game 6 of the Final to win its second straight Stanley Cup. Marchand scored six goals in the Final alone. His 14-year gap between Cups is the third-longest in league history. Through that 2025 Cup run, Florida had won 11 of 12 playoff series since Maurice took over and Tkachuk arrived in the summer of 2022, the AP reported, and two of those wins came against Boston.

Sunday at TD Garden

The Panthers visit the Bruins on Sunday, Nov 8, at 1 PM ET. Boston comes in at 12-4-1 with 25 points through 17 games, and won 6-2 in Pittsburgh on Thursday. Florida is 9-5-2 with 20 points through 16 games, and plays at Washington on Saturday first, so Sunday is the second half of a back-to-back.

Plenty of the faces from that 2023 series are still here. Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, Pavel Zacha and Swayman are on Boston's roster. Florida's roster still has Barkov, Reinhart, Bennett, Verhaeghe, Tkachuk, Anton Lundell and Luostarinen, plus Marchand, now on the other side of the handshake line.

What it means on the board

• History sets the mood, not the number. These teams have played a 7-5 playoff game in 2023 and a 2-1 playoff game in 2024, so we lean on this season's form for totals, not the 2023 box scores.
• The back-to-back matters most for the goalie market. Florida plays Saturday and Sunday, so saves props and the puck line are the kind of markets we wait on until the starters are confirmed.
• Florida outshot Boston 198-135 in the 2024 series. Shots-on-goal props for both top lines are worth a look, and the research updates through the day as lineups post.

This is research and context, not a pick. Follow the full NHL board and free picks, catch up on the latest NHL recaps, or read up on how a total works.

21+. Research and commentary, not betting advice.