Florida extended its road winning streak to 10 games despite playing on back-to-back nights in Pittsburgh and Buffalo

As has been the case for much of the season, the Florida Panthers are proving to be a team that finds ways to win.

No team can be at their best night in and night out.

The good teams are the ones that can still come away with two points on nights where they don’t have their A-game.

That’s exactly what the Panthers are showing they can be.

It’s clear what Florida looks like when they’re firing on all cylinders, with the waves of speed and suffocating checking, but then there are nights where it looks like their opponent is finding more ways than usual to earn chances against the Cats.

On those nights it seems we find ourselves talking about a heroic, timely effort from one or more unlikely sources.

And on that note…on to the takeaways.

Stolarz saves the bacon

On a night where the Panthers didn’t have enough in the tank to operate at the optimal, in-your-face manner they generally like to come at their opponents, it was their backup goaltender who held the team up until they could find their footing.

Stolarz came up with big save after big save during the first half of the game, back when Florida was clinging as hard as they could to a 1-0 lead while getting outshot 17-6 during a shaky second period.

He finished with 45 stops, 10 of which were of the high danger variety, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Buffalo’s expected goals were 3.11.

“We didn't have the legs that we would normally have in this game and our goaltender was asked to do something that you need if you're gonna get on any kind of a roll,” Maurice said. “God, he's been solid and so good for us. We’ve play well in front of our goaltending all year so sometimes you don't notice how well they've played for us, but tonight you did.”

Big shifts from the bottom six

For the second night in a row, Florida received a nice boost from outside the top six.

Between defensive matchups and offensive pressure, both the Anton Lundell line and the Kevin Stenlund line provided productive, high compete shifts on a night the Panthers needed every ounce of energy they could muster.

“Lundell’s line and Stenlund’s line were really, really good,” Maurice said. “Lundell, they matched (Tage) Thompson up against them for a big part of the night, that's tough, and they were good. They skated well. We ran Bennett's line and Barkov’s line hard last night, I had Barkov over 21 minutes in a hard game, so we needed the other guys to come up with energy. Both of those lines were great.”

Tough night to score

Florida may had led for the majority of the game (all but the first 9:25), but the result was far from as secure as the 4-0 final may indicate.

Holding a 1-0 lead through much of the second period, the Panthers were being swarmed by Buffalo.

If not for the brilliance in goal of Anthony Stolarz, Thursday’s game would have gone much differently for Florida. That wasn’t the case, though, as Stolarz stood tall and held the Cats in the game long enough for the insurance goals to start coming in.

“The goalies were dialed in on both sides, and I think that tells both benches that goals are going to be at a premium tonight,” Maurice said. “So the second one then is a bit of breathing room, and the third one we feel obviously really confident the game is over, but the second one is the breathing room we need.” 

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