Panthers face Connor McDavid again in Game 5

SUNRISE – So, yes, in case you’re wondering, that’s Connor McDavid.

This is the King of the North. This is the oil that fuels the Edmonton Oilers engine. This is the player who embodied everything the Florida Panthers feared for the second straight game on Tuesday night as they advanced to the Stanley Cup Final.

And so, for the second year in a row, the Stanley Cup came into the arena with the intention of taking the Panthers home, and instead left on the shuttle between South Florida and Edmonton. After the Panthers’ 5-3 loss, it’s back to Edmonton for Game 6 on Friday night, back to the Great Beyond and back to a series the Panthers were trying to avoid.

What happened on Tuesday? Pick your poison. The Panthers conceded a shorthanded goal for the second straight game to open the scoring. They were again uncharacteristically sloppy on their strength, which is their defense. They don’t usually win shootouts against teams. All true.

But the main reason for their defeat was that McDavid once again showed he is the best player in the world. In a spectacular second half, he scored a goal and had two assists, with each play better than the last. The first assist was a secondary goal, and in fact he opened the scoring that made it 2-0.

He then scored from an impossible billiards shot angle by Panthers goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovsky to make it 3-0.

When the Panthers finally got within 3-2, McDavid skated between two Panthers defenders like a knife through cheddar cheese and passed the puck to fourth-line player Corey Perry, who simply had to slide the puck in to score.

They knew McDavid’s strength was something they were aware of before the series began. They were reminded of that in their 8-1 loss in Game 4, in which McDavid had a goal and three assists. In that game, he surpassed Wayne Gretzky’s postseason assist total with 32.

On Tuesday, he upped the ante. He now has 41 points in the postseason, which puts him fourth in playoff scoring behind Gretzky (twice) and Mario Lemieux. See how thin the air he’s breathing? And see what the Panthers are up against now?

They tried hard to come back on Tuesday night. Matthew Tkachuk revived a 3-0 game with his first goal in 10 games. Evan Rodrigues cut it to 4-2. Tkachuk passed to Oliver Ekman-Larsson for a goal that cut it to 4-3 with just under 16 minutes left and breathed new life into Amerant Bank Arena.

But the Panthers haven’t gotten that far, needing five or six goals to win games. Defense is their strength, their priority, what they do best. In every playoff game they’ve shut down the opponent’s best player. Nikita Kucherov of Tampa Bay. David Pastrnak of Boston. Artemi Panarin of the New York Rangers.

Not McDavid.

Not for how he changes this series.

Before Game 5, everyone was wondering what Game 4 would mean. Edmonton’s 8-1 win kept them alive in the series. Did it do more? Would returning to Sunrise decide the Panthers’ game? Would a second straight game with the Stanley Cup in the building calm their nerves?

“It feels different,” Aaron Ekblad said Tuesday morning. “It feels like a normal hockey game.”

Panthers coach Paul Maurice put Ryan Lomberg in the lineup for the first time this series. It may have been a small change, but the message was indicative of what Maurice thought this team needed.

“Of course we know his skills, his speed, his energy and all that, but in a game like this, where so much is at stake, how much does his personality help him?” he said. “Of course I know he’s the guy who often gives the other guys the loosening up they need.”

If they needed to loosen up before Game 5, what now?

Now it’s back to Edmonton for Game 6 where the world is playing against them. Now the debate is whether Edmonton has the edge in this series. The question now is how the Panthers feel about a 3-0 series that is now 3-2.

Even now, McDavid is a miracle. He woke up in the last two games. He took Edmonton with him. And a series that seemed to be over without the coronation has made the King of the North a topic of conversation again.