The Florida Panthers didn’t have a three-game winning streak in the regular season until Feb. 9 — their 54th game of the year. Only once all season did they string together a series of victories that exceeded three contests, and that was the six-game winning run they had from March 29 to April 8 that gave them the 12 points required to scrape into the post-season — one point ahead of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres.
Since landing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, however, the Cats — currently on a four-game winning streak — have already managed to equal the six-game winning streak they needed to qualify for the big dance by claiming the last three games of the first round and the first three of the second.
Talk about peaking at the right time.
As you’d expect, the Panthers — who can clinch just their second trip to the Cup Final in franchise history with a win over the Carolina Hurricanes at home Wednesday night in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final — are in good company when it comes to playoff heaters since the turn of the century. According to the wizards in the Sportsnet Stats department, Florida is just the ninth squad to post three-game winning streaks contained within three different series since 2000. One club, the 2012 Los Angeles Kings, registered a three-game winning run in all four series they played en route to a championship.
With that in mind, we wanted to place the Panthers’ success — Florida has won 10 of its past 11 outings — alongside some of the other surges we’ve seen in the past 23 years from teams that either went on to win the Cup or lost in the final.
2012 L.A. Kings
The Kings’ 2012 title run reads like it came from the world-beating 1977 Montreal Canadiens or the 1985 Edmonton Oilers; except, like Florida, Los Angeles grabbed the last playoff berth available in its conference that year and proceeded to stomp the competition.
In Round 1, the Kings jumped out to a 3-0 lead on a Vancouver Canucks team that was one year removed from making it to Game 7 of the Final — and had finished atop the league standings with 111 points — and ousted them in five games. Next up, the 109-point St. Louis Blues were sent packing in four straight before the Kings chewed up another lower seed, the Phoenix Coyotes, in the conference final.
Games 1 and 2 of the Final in New Jersey were close, but the Kings pulled out overtime victories in both. L.A. didn’t lose two games in a row that post-season until allowing the Devils to win Games 4 and 5 of the Final after the Kings had seized a 3-0 series lead.
They smashed New Jersey 6-1 in the Cup-clinching Game 6 on home ice and finished with a 16-4 record in the second season. Only the 1988 Edmonton Oilers, who went 16-2, have a better mark during a playoff season that featured four best-of-seven series.
2008 Detroit Red Wings
Steve Yzerman was gone, Nick Lidstrom was 38 and the Red Wings — guided up front by Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg — were starting to develop an unwanted reputation for great regular seasons followed by playoff flops. Then they ripped off a nine-game winning streak in the 2008 Stanley Cup Playoffs — the longest run of the past 30 years — that took them from tied 2-2 with Nashville in the first round to up 3-0 on the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference Final.
(Only four teams in the history of the league have won more than nine games in a row during a single playoff year and, oddly, the three tied at the top with 11-game streaks — Montreal, Pittsburgh and Chicago — all did it during either the 1992 or 1993 playoffs).
In the final series of ’08, Detroit held Sidney Crosby and Co. — playing in their first championship showdown — without a goal in Games 1 and 2 in the Joe Louis Arena. The Wings took a 3-0 stranglehold on the series, but credit the young Pens for extending it to six games before Detroit claimed the Cup.
2010 Chicago Blackhawks
Early in the 2010 post-season, it seemed like the young Hawks guided by Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith still weren’t ready for prime time. Chicago lost Games 1 and 3 of its first-round series versus Nashville to find itself in a 2-1 hole.
Then the Hawks blanked the Preds in Game 4, won an absolutely bonkers Game 5 that saw Kane tie the contest with 14 seconds to go on a short-handed marker and proceeded to claim 13 of their next 15 outings as they went from trailing Nashville 2-1 in Round 1 to up 2-0 on the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup Final.
The Flyers pushed back with two home-ice wins to even the series, but Chicago claimed Game 5 at home, setting the stage for Kane’s “Is it actually in?!?” overtime winner in Game 6.
2022 Colorado Avalanche
The Avs did catch a break in Round 1 when Nashville (the poor Preds are the clear losers of this list) had to play without its MVP, Juuse Saros due to an injury. Still, credit an Avs team overdue for real playoff success for taking advantage.
Colorado swept Nashville and did the same to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final. By the time the Avs took a 2-0 lead in the final on Tampa Bay, they had won 14 of 16 post-season contests and finished the job with a six-game series victory.
2013 and 2019 Boston Bruins
Not all heaters end with hoisting the Cup. The 2019 Bruins are one of just five squads this century to win eight straight playoff contests, going from trailing the Columbus Blue Jackets 2-1 in the second round to up 1-0 on the St. Louis Blues in the final. Boston dropped Game 2 versus the Blues in an OT thriller, then stomped St. Louis in Game 3. However, the Blues held it together and pulled out a seven-game win.
Like the ’19 outfit, the 2013 Bruins had a playoff stretch in which they went 11-2. That squad, of course, was on the good side of “it was 4-1” in Game 7 of the first-round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs. That shocker set the B’s off on their run of winning 11 of 13, which took them from the verge of losing to Toronto to up 2-1 in the final versus the Blackhawks.
Again, though, the Western Conference champs found a way, earning their Cup-clinching victory in jarring fashion by scoring two goals 15 seconds apart in the final 1:16 of play in Game 6 to completely stun the TD Garden crowd.
2003 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
A No. 7 seed under the old one-to-eight conference format, the Ducks rode Jean-Sebastien Giguere’s brilliant goaltending to a 12-2 record through three rounds, stunning Curtis Joseph and the defending-champion Red Wings with a four-game sweep in Round 1 that started with a triple-OT thriller.
Mike Babcock’s Ducks eventually lost a seven-game final to the Devils in the coach’s first NHL season, but Giguere was named playoff MVP for his brilliance.