Amid loud atmosphere — and thrown water bottles — Panthers’ Montour remains calm presence
Florida Panthers defenseman Brandon Montour had one objective early in the third period on Friday: Don’t get hit.
No, not by the Boston Bruins. He can handle what happens on the ice during a game.
He was trying to avoid the projectiles being sent to the ice at TD Garden by frustrated Bruins fans as their team began to unravel.
In the opening minutes of third period, the Bruins’ Jakub Lauko was called for goaltender interference as he battled with Florida defenseman Aaron Ekblad on a drive to the net and ultimately ran into Sergei Bobrovsky.
Fans were irate at the call and began throwing assorted items — from rally towels to water bottles — onto the ice, causing a brief delay before the Panthers went on their fifth power play of the night.
“As long as those water bottles aren’t hitting us, I think we’re good,” Montour said a day later with a bit of a laugh. “Once we’re playing, we’re just focused on that. We can hide behind the glass if the water bottles are still falling.”
Montour got the last laugh, scoring on the ensuing power play with a booming slap shot from the point after the Panthers passed the puck throughout the offensive zone. The goal gave Florida a four-goal lead in an eventual 6-2 win to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 Stanley Cup Playoffs second-round series.
“It gets loud out there,” Montour said. “Boos when penalties are called, water bottles thrown on the ice, but it is what it is. It’s loud on the road and at home. We focus on what we have to do during the play and the rest is kind of there.”
The Panthers are feeding off the animosity. They are embracing the contention that is coming from playing the Bruins.
And Montour is a fitting player to thrive in that situation.
He plays with a fire that is masked by a joyous, happy-go-lucky, joking persona. He’s a favorite in the dressing room, one who keeps the mood light and is able to diffuse tense situations.
But he also certainly has no problem stirring things up when the time is right.
Take what happened in the third period of Florida’s 6-1 win in Game 2 of the series, when the teams combined for a dozen 10-minute misconducts in the frame due to a series of on-ice scrums.
One of those came after Montour’s shorthanded goal that capped scoring. As a scrum scrum ensued behind the night, Montour mocked Boston’s Brad Marchand by wagging his tongue — an impersonation of Marchand licking Ryan Callahan back in 2018 during a 2018 playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“It wasn’t really planned. I saw his face there,” Montour said. “When I first did it, it was all funny. I got a lot of texts with the licking emoji, but I guess when [Marchand does] those things, you’ve got to kind of take the joke maybe the rest of his career.”
Montour is backing up the antics with his performance on the ice, too.
Montour enters Game 4 of the Bruins series on Sunday with eight points in eight games so far this postseason. He is one of three defensemen on a team still in the playoffs averaging at least one point per game — Colorado’s Cale Makar (12 points in eight games) and Edmonton’s Evan Bouchard (11 points in seven games) are the others. His three goals are tied for the second most in the playoffs among defensemen, behind only Vancouver’s Nikita Zadorov’s four.
He finished the regular season with 33 points (eight goals, 25 assists) over 66 games after missing the first 16 games of the season recovering from offseason shoulder surgery.
“He’s been good for us,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “I thought he was really rolling early. He’s skating well.”
This and that
▪ The Panthers are rolling out the same lineup on Sunday as they did in Game 3.
▪ Marchand (upper body) is out for Game 4. Marchand did not play in the third period of Game 3 on Friday after an early-game collision at center ice with Florida’s Sam Bennett.
