Florida Forces Game 7 With Pittsburgh, 4-3

There was every opportunity for the Florida Panthers to fold Thursday, and no one would have blamed them had they conceded the Eastern Conference title to the Pittsburgh Penguins and gone home to count their achievements and their plastic rats.

“I don’t know anything about fairy tales or magic,” defenseman Terry Carkner said after the Panthers squeezed out a 4-3 victory over the Penguins before a roaring crowd of 14,703 at Miami Arena, making Saturday’s series finale at Pittsburgh a ticket to the Stanley Cup finals.

“We had nothing to lose tonight, nothing to focus on except scoring one more goal than they did. When you’re facing elimination, it becomes simple.”

It would have been simpler to give up than to fight back when second-period goals by Joe Dziedzic and Kevin Miller gave the Penguins a 2-1 lead, but Bill Lindsay swatted in the rebound of a shot by Johan Garpenlov to tie it at 14:56. And after the Panthers took the lead at 9:35 of the third period on a spectacular goal by Martin Straka only to see Tomas Sandstrom bring Pittsburgh even at 12:17, they could have conceded to what seemed inevitable.

But the Panthers weren’t ready for their season to end.

“[Sandstrom’s goal] was a little bit of a letdown. We don’t usually give up leads like that,” center Rob Niedermayer said. “To come back after that showed some character, and that’s what this team is made of.”

Niedermayer sparked the comeback by winning a faceoff in the Pittsburgh zone from Bryan Smolinski and passing the puck back to Carkner, whose shot was saved by Penguin goalie Tom Barrasso. When Smolinski failed to check him, Niedermayer had time for a second shot, one more than Barrasso could handle.

Thanks to Niedermayer’s goal, and a lunging save by goalie John Vanbiesbrouck on Jaromir Jagr with 34.6 seconds to play, the Panthers moved within a victory of facing the Colorado Avalanche for the Cup, starting Tuesday at Denver’s McNichols Arena.

“To be honest with you, I think Pittsburgh is a better team, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win,” Carkner said.

Penguin Coach Ed Johnston was upset about his team’s defensive zone coverage Thursday. “They were driving to the net all night,” said Johnston, whose team is 3-3 in seventh games in its playoff history. “A couple of times we were traffic cops out there. We watched them go in and out. . . . You don’t like to leave it to a Game 7 [but] we didn’t play 60 minutes, so we didn’t deserve it tonight.”

Mario Lemieux and Jagr, who finished 1-2 in scoring this season, were held without a goal for the fourth consecutive game by Florida’s stifling defense.

“Defensively, they’re the best team I’ve played against,” Lemieux said. “It seems like they have four guys at the blue line. You beat one guy and there are two others on you. You have no room at all out there.”

If the Penguins had room for error Thursday, the Panthers did not. Yet they showed no sign of nerves. “We knew the closer the game and the longer it went on, it would be in our favor,” Florida center Tom Fitzgerald said. “The pressure was on them.”

They intensified the pressure by scoring first, a controversial goal credited to Scott Mellanby at 7:45 of the first period. With referee Terry Gregson preparing to call a delayed penalty on the Penguins, Mellanby broke in on Barrasso with Pittsburgh defenseman Chris Tamer frantically hooking him. As Mellanby fell, the puck skipped toward Barrasso, who batted it with his stick and inadvertently banked it off Tamer’s leg. The puck slid into the net a second before Mellanby crashed into it and dislodged it from its moorings.

The goal wasn’t immediately posted, to the Panthers’ dismay. Gregson called upstairs to Bryan Lewis, the NHL’s supervisor of officials, to confirm the puck had gone in before the net was dislodged and that it hadn’t gone in off Mellanby’s skate. The Penguins contended play should have been dead when Barrasso repelled the puck with his stick because it was in their possession, but Lewis said the goal was legitimate. “Touching it was not possession and control,” Lewis said. “Terry told me it never entered his mind that he should have stopped it based on possession and control.”

The Penguins pulled even at 1:55 of the second period, on a bang-bang play finished off in the slot by Miller, and they took the lead at 10:16, when Dziedzic redirected a shot by J.J. Daigneault. Lindsay tied it and Straka--who had been scratched in Game 5--put Florida ahead when he completed a give-and-go with Lindsay.

Sandstrom’s goal, set up by Lemieux, could have spelled the end for the Panthers. Instead, Niedermayer helped carry the Panthers to a summit they never expected to reach. “They told us to pack for a week,” Vanbiesbrouck said, “so why not?”

Florida Coach Doug MacLean said he had coached only one seventh game, 15 years ago.

“In the Island Junior League on Prince Edward Island.”

He doesn’t recall the score.

“We must have won, or I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be back there teaching school.”