On road to extinction, Panthers take right turn

The Florida Panthers were right there Thursday night.

They were so close to out of the NHL playoffs, Lord Stanley and his big silver cup began to feel like a rumor. The playoffs themselves began to seem like a dream that teased us awhile before deciding that, all in all, it would rather be in Philadelphia.

Except, these Cats will not die. You cannot kill them. Go ahead, try. Sic the big dogs on them. Poison their rats. It will not work.

If these Cats have nine lives (if not more), figure they used up a couple or three Thursday night in the bedlam of Miami Arena.

They blew an early 2-0 lead, heard the life leave the building . . . but came back.

They blew a 3-2 lead in the last minute of regulation, felt a season teeter and tip . . . but came back.

Stu Barnes in regulation and then Dave Lowry in overtime scored the telling goals to knot this hockey series at two games and give the Cats a real chance -- if not yet a real good one -- to keep the Cup in sight.

The good fortune of Barnes and Lowry may have been preordained. (You think things like that when fate seems a little too good to be true.)

Consider:

Long limo pulls up Thursday morning in front of the hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach where the Panthers stay during the playoffs. Barnes, Bill Lindsay and Lowry chance to saunter past as the door opens and out steps Demi Moore, back in town to re-shoot a new ending to her upcoming Striptease movie.

``We had three or four black eyes standing around in a row,'' said a smiling Barnes, sporting a shiner and stitches along the brow, gifts from the Flyers. ``She just kind of laughed. She was real nice.''

The actress said: ``What happened to you guys?''

She didn't know. What happened to them was . . . hockey.

Darn thing just keeps on happening. That cold rush of mayhem interrupted by small moments of magic -- it happened again Thursday night.

Ain't it great?!

Eddie Jovanovski, pummeling Eric Lindros against the Plexiglas. Robert Svehla, bloody face on ice, looking for his teeth. So much violence inherent in the game, but so many moments of elegance interspersed.

No other sport can set a jammed building alight with such quicksilver flicks and slaps, and this sport delivered with Thursday night's intense 4-3 survival by Florida.

You had to be inside the Arena to feel the NHL season come alive like it did. To see the Stanley Cup itself return to a semblance of focus.

Until those moments happened -- first with Barnes' go-ahead goal and finally with Lowry's winner -- it had begun to feel too much like the end. Up 2-0 and suddenly tied by two Philadelphia goals within 78 seconds, the Panthers seemed to be fading fast. All momentum was sapped from the Cats. The electric crowd went quiet. A deadly 3-1 series hole and a somber flight to Philly seemed in the offing.

A grinning fan in a Flyers jersey held aloft a large rubber rat . . . inside an industrial-size mousetrap.

Then, those small moments of magic amid the mayhem.

Paul Laus cocks his stick and fires from the blue line, and the puck is hurtling maybe four feet off the ice, net-bound. Barnes is stationed in front of goalie Ron Hextall, and Barnes' stick is raised parallel to the ice.

He looks like a baseball batter preparing to bunt. And the puck is coming at him like a bullet.

It barely nicks his stick.

The bunt would have caromed foul. But this ain't baseball, grandma.

The redirected puck off Barnes' blade beats Hextall -- one of those moments better seen in slo-mo, without sound.

The goal that got it started Thursday was like that, too. The first of two by slump-snapping Rob Niedermayer was that moment of elegance. He glides, glides, veers sharply to his right and just flicks the puck home, as casually as you'd swipe at a gnat on your forearm.

Then, overtime, and more is left: those darned Cats, spending another of those lives.

Lowry's goal, like Barnes', was just a flash of blade.

``I just barely got a stick on it,'' he said.

It worked on the crowd like a matchstick works on dynamite. It was almost enough to make you believe in magic.

You say Demi Moore was in town Thursday to rework the ending?

I think maybe the Panthers were doing the same thing.