Self-inflicted wounds doom Panthers after grabbing early lead in must-win game
Heading into the final extended road trip of the season, the Florida Panthers must face it with their backs against the wall.
There are nine games remaining on Florida’s schedule. Three points separate them from the final Wild Card spot, currently occupied by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Some teams perform their absolute best when faced with a do-or-die situation.
The Panthers, it seems, are now tripping themselves up.
During Saturday night’s 4-3 loss to the New York Rangers, Florida finished the game with 14 giveaways.
To put that into perspective, it’s bad when a team hits double digits when looking at turnovers for a game. The Panthers had eight total giveaways between their previous two losses to Toronto and Philadelphia.
Fourteen is a big number, especially when considering Florida jumped out to a 2-0 lead Saturday and dominated New York for much of the first period.
The game was set up to play into the Cats hands.
Take a lead and sit on it, on your home ice, with the last line change and momentum on your side.
Instead, the Panthers did exactly what they were programmed not to do.
Head Coach Paul Maurice gave a detailed answer when asked what changed after Florida opened the game as strong as it did.
“Our play with the puck,” he said. “We had the confidence in the first to grab it, move it or carry it ourselves, and then be pretty simple with it. But we started with turnovers, and then trying to force plays through the seam, which would be the place that you don't want to do that, and then some simple, simple puck handles, and that's just the tension coming in or you feel the game is tipping, but we touched the puck on every one of those (Rangers goals).”
Looking back at the four times New York scored, each play can be traced back to Florida controlling the puck only to, one way or another, have it end up in the hands of the opposition.
The game was both literally and figuratively in the Panthers hands, and it was squandered away.
“We had full control, or partial, good battle control, where we weren't in trouble, and didn't come up with it,” Maurice said of the Rangers’ goals. “So find a way almost maybe to relax a little bit more with the puck, but we’ve got to get our feet moving.”
With nine games left in the season, trying to teach those kind of lessons may fall into the too little, too late category.
Not to say Maurice hasn’t been hammering the point home all year, but if the message isn’t getting through at this stage, it’s probably not going to.
Speaking to some of the players after the game, the focus seemed to be more on what the Rangers did right than what Florida did wrong.
“Playing against good teams, they’re going to have their momentum,” said Panthers Captain Sasha Barkov. “They played well in the second period, and in the third period they defended well, they didn’t give us that much. We played against a good team, and they won the game today. Now we just have to regroup and move on.”
Winger Ryan Lomberg echoed a similar sentiment.
“They're obviously a good team that can put the puck in the net,” Lomberg said of the Rangers. “A couple bad bounces there in the third, and we weren't able to claw our way back. It's a tough loss.”
The good news?
Florida’s success, or lack thereof, is still very much in their own hands.
As recent as a week ago, the Panthers were playing their best hockey of the season.
That first period against the Rangers? Bottle that up and distribute it during Florida’s upcoming four-game road trip.
There is no time to dwell on the negatives. Not with the finish line in sight.
“We're all big boys. We're all pros,” Lomberg said. “It doesn't matter where we are, we know the task at hand. We're definitely looking forward to having a good road trip.”
A game like Saturday’s can stick with a team.
It’s one thing when a better team beats you. It’s another when you beat yourself.
“It's our job to forget,” said Barkov. “We play so many games, if you concentrate on bad things, you're going to miss out on the whole season. It's our job to forget all the bad things. We know we've been in this situation earlier in the season and we've always come out of it. We just need to forget about this one and move on.
“Right now, for us, every game is like a big game, they’re all big games. We’ve got to treat them like playoff games, and we’ve got to try and win all of them, one game at a time, one shift at a time. That’s all we can do.”
On Sunday, the Panthers hoped to leave their forgettable play behind as they boarded a plane in Fort Lauderdale and headed to Canada’s capital city.
Florida’s four-game trip beings in Ottawa before a back-to-back in Toronto and Montreal, finally concluding Saturday in Columbus.
Maurice knows for the Panthers to be firing on all cylinders they can’t be worried about playing a certain way and not making mistakes.
A team clutching their sticks too hard isn’t one playing at its full potential.
“We've got to embrace that challenge and enjoy it, and not let us tighten up,” Maurice said. “It's not a matter of playing free, but certainly playing with an excitement.”