To win on the big stage, you have to handle the public’s short-term judgment and, more importantly, the private soul-searching. Anyone can go to a bookstore and see shelves of books on success. But its traveling companion, failure?

Nikola Mikkola, 28, and Kevin Stenlund, 27, played years of hockey but never found an every-game home until this first season with the Panthers. Mikkola never played more than the 54 games with St. Louis two years ago. Stenlund started last years with the Manitoba Moose and his career-high in games until this season with the Panthers was the 59 he played with the Cleveland Monsters.

When you listen to them, it’s not the fear of failure that’s clouded the Panthers the last couple games. It’s the specter of success. It’s the idea that everything they’ve “worked for all our lives,’’ as teammate Matthew Tkachuk put it, sits in the arena waiting to go home with them.

The Stanley Cup is theirs with a win again Friday night in Game 6.

“That’s the first opportunity we’ve had as a franchise, really, to feel the excitement of (winning the Cup),’’ Maurice said after the Game 4 loss to Edmonton. “We’ll learn how to channel it.”

Win or learn. That’s the lesson of the playoffs, the one all these players have had getting here. Failure, on this doorstep, seems the easier thing to handle. I once asked Lomberg what he had to overcome, and he laid it out perfectly as an undrafted player.

“The big thing was to be ready for my chance,’’ he said. “I was working the whole time to be ready. There’s so many people in front of you as an undrafted player, if you’re not ready, they go right on to the next guy. You’ve got to show you belong in that opportunity. I was ready.”

Now’s a different opportunity to be ready on the biggest stage. They’ve all failed to get here in more crushing ways than the past two games. But it’ll take the lessons of those two games, plus everything that got them here, to meet the biggest challenge of their now successful careers.

©2024 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.