Three takeaways: Consistency, confidence creeping back into Panthers game
Paul Maurice on Florida staying out of the penalty box: "It's not going to happen"
The Florida Panthers wrapped up their road schedule, as far as the regular season is concerned, on Saturday afternoon in Boston.
Fresh off a resounding win in Ottawa on Thursday, Florida was hoping to build on the win and show some consistency in playing their brand of hockey.
Well despite dropping Saturday’s game to Boston 3-2 in overtime, the Panthers succeeded in playing another strong game and building on the confidence that came from the previous outing.
Let’s get to the takeaways.
Excellent third period
This was Florida’s tenth game in 17 days and was the fourth game in six days on the road.
They entered the third period trailing 2-1 and proceeded to play a dominant twenty minutes, outshooting Boston 13-5 and forcing the game to overtime.
It was arguably Florida’s best period of the road trip, and who knows, perhaps it was one of those turning points that coaches often reference if things start going well.
“I thought when they made it 2-1, they had a handful of minutes where they were on us a little bit, but I liked the way, with what we've had over the last 10 games, I liked the way we played,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “I liked to how we got better in the third period when we had nothing in the tank to do that, they pushed through. I was happy with the effort. Disappointed with the result but real happy with the effort.”
Team starting to feel good again
Even with the overtime loss, Florida has now put together back-to-back games they can be pleased with.
Combine that with the aforementioned third period and that the Panthers have been playing without Aaron Ekblad and Carter Verhaeghe, the team has a few reasons to start feeling good about itself heading into the final homestand.
That was the message from Maurice, who wasn’t about to let a 3-on-3 overtime loss cast a dark cloud over the progress made in the past few days.
“I don't think we're lacking confidence,” Maurice said. “I think we have a pretty good idea…I thought last game and this game, believe it or not, looked very similar. It’s just, you're playing a different team and they have a different style and you're not going to get as much offense. I thought we did a really good job with our focus there with all the penalties, it was a challenge for us for sure and I thought they did a good job staying focused.”
Maurice on penalty issues
Over the past couple weeks, Maurice has taken a few subtle digs at how the officiating has gone for his team.
It isn’t just that the Panthers have been called for quite a few penalties lately, it’s the disparity between the calls against Florida and those against their opponents.
After Florida was called for another five penalties on Saturday, Maurice seemed to concede, perhaps tongue in cheek, that killing a handful of power plays would just be the norm for the Panthers.
“No, we're not fixing it because we're not fixing it,” Maurice said. “We're going to do everything we can to stay out of the box, but it's not going to happen. The other team's not going into the box, so we can kill penalties as hard as we can and try to score some goals.
“Yeah, it's great,” Maurice added on Florida’s penalty kill. “We've had the opportunity to work on it regularly, very heavily, in the last month, and it's going to be the difference for us because we're going to be in the box.”
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