Florida may not play many pretty games while they're this shorthanded, but they're still earning points
Florida may not play many pretty games while they're this shorthanded, but they're still earning points
It hasn’t been the easiest of starts to the season for the Florida Panthers.
Between the team’s extremely tough schedule and them playing without a pair of crucial forwards, the Panthers are doing their best to maintain and continue to play the brand of hockey they know will find success.
Of course, playing four road games in six days, then coming home for three in five days before heading back on the road again would be rough on anyone, but it’s particularly challenging for a team that plays a style that requires a high level of speed and physicality at all times.
Through six games, the Panthers are 3-2-1.
They’re far from out of the woods, but things should get easier as the team gets healthier.
Let’s get to Thursday’s takeaways.
NOT THE SMOOTHEST OF GAMES
While both teams managed a fair amount of offense, with Florida putting up 32 shots and Vancouver firing off 28, there were plenty of segments where the game seemed to sputter along.
Considering both teams are dealing with tough schedules, and neither is at full strength, it’s not terribly surprising to see things going that way.
“It felt like both teams had a hard time finishing on their best chances,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “And then, both teams will play hard, they’ll block shots, they’ll draw in a battle. It wasn't a smooth game for either team by any means, both teams of guys out of their lineup, I think they're important, so a bit of a grinder.”
PENALTY KILL LOOKING STRONG
Through their first six games, Florida has now killed off 16 of the 18 power plays they’ve had to defend against.
Perhaps more impressive, the Cats have killed off 13 straight penalties, dating all the way to their second game of the season in Ottawa.
Why is that so impressive? Aside from the obvious impressiveness of a streak that long, particularly this early in the season, there is also the fact that Florida has been doing it without Barkov, one of the best penalty-killing forwards in the NHL.
Anton Lundell has stepped up with Sam Reinhart to form a solid forward pairing in the meantime, and it also helps that the Panthers have been very stable on the back end of their penalty killing units, with Aaron Ekblad and Gus Forsling working as one duo and Niko Mikkola and Dmitry Kulikov forming another.
Add to that the emergence of Jesper Boqvist and A.J. Greer as reliable penalty killers and suddenly there are a plethora of Panthers who can be called upon to shut down the opposition.
“That's been good for us, especially with (Sasha) Barkov out, because he's such a driver of that for us,” Maurice said of the PK. “But that top four group of defensemen that we have, and I like what Greer and Boqvist have been able to add. We think with Barkov and Reinhart, taking one tour on a penalty kill instead of two, we couldn't do that as much tonight with Barkov out, but we think we've got some depth of the penalty kill position, and we haven't seen Tomas Nosek yet, and (playing on the PK) is a reason that we brought him in.”
SURVIVING A TOUGH STRETCH
There has been a good amount of attention, and rightly so, paid to Florida being without Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk.
We’re barely a week into the season and the defending Stanley Cup champs being without arguably their two best players is a big deal.
But Florida’s schedule to start the season has been and will continue to be a bit of a nightmare.
Fortunately for your favorite hockey team from South Florida, they’ve built a culture where they welcome adversity because they know it makes them a better, stronger unit in the long run.
“We’ve played a lot of hockey here,” Maurice said. “We’ve been afforded the opportunity to play considerably more hockey than most teams. We appreciate that. And that's okay, I think that that's the narrative of our entire season. When you look at 14 sets of back-to-back, I think there's only one other team in the league that plays more tired games than we do. I think we catch a team tired like once or twice the entire season, going over to Finland, we're going to have some injuries we have to deal with, it's going to be some nights that don't look smooth. So you're going to drive your team real hard, we're going to get these guys to work real hard, but I'm not going to be too rough on them when I think the tanks have fall, as long as they empty it. There's no complaints. I think that's what we saw tonight.”
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