Florida's top defensive pairing is helping out in a lot of ways, proving their one of the best in the NHL

The Florida Panthers haven’t enjoyed an ideal start to their Stanley Cup defending season.

Seven games in and they’ve had to play without Sasha Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk for five of them, and thanks to a salary cap crunch, have been forced to employ an uneven roster several times to boot.

But wait…they’re still 4-2-1?

They’ve got points in four straight?

And Tkachuk is expected back next week?

Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice has this team dialed in, and even while playing shorthanded, they’re still playing teams extremely tough.

Here are the takeaways from Saturday’s win over Vegas:

BEST WIN OF THE SEASON?

Considering the circumstances that Florida was facing on Saturday, boy was their head coach pleased with what he saw.

Paul Maurice is not an unreasonable man, so he knows what is fair to expect from his team when they’re playing short a man and without Barkov and Tkachuk.

That's right, in addition to being without the two stars, Jonah Gadjovich also missed Saturday's game with an injury, forcing the team to dress only 10 forwards. 

The effort that the Panthers gave while coming back to beat Vegas showed their coach that this team has something.

“Oh, I liked that game tonight an awful lot,” said Maurice. “(Vegas is) a deep team, and they’ve got a heavy back end. I thought that's as good a game as we've played this year. We had some turnovers, but you know what? I don't even care about them. I mean, Sergei had to make a couple of big saves off it, but the effort was just outstanding, and the compete was great. The bench was great. We ran some guys into again, some big minutes, but you know, the things that you learn through adversity…we had those two important players, really three important players, out of our top 12, those two big guys go down, and we go into Buffalo, and we don't like our game, and then we haven't lost in regulation since. So that ability to kind of rally in a tough schedule, I'm really pleased with their work ethic, but I think I liked the bench though the best, they were wired in from the start. I liked our game.”

TOP PAIRING GOBBLES UP MINUTES

Between the two of them, Florida’s top defensive pairing of Aaron Ekblad and Gus Forsling played just under 55 minutes on Saturday.

They’ve been leaned on heavily while the Panthers have maneuvered their time without a pair of elite forwards, playing sound defensively while chipping in on the offensive end.

Forsling’s overtime winner against Vegas was his second goal and fourth point, three of which have come in his past four games.

“Just on minutes alone, the amount of time that those guys played, and they've been doing that for seven games, right?” Maurice said. “They've got big minutes on them. I think you're looking at that veteran experience. Gustav Forsling is an incredibly fit man, and Aaron Ekblad, his test numbers were off the charts this year, relative to where he'd been. So they both put, after a pretty successful season, they both put in an incredible amount of time, to give them a chance to be as good as they were tonight. So it wasn't just, they were good for two and a half hours, you’ve got to be good for two or three years to get to that fitness level, that compete level. I'm happy for them. They earned it.”

POWER PLAY CONFIDENCE GROWING

Florida’s penalty kill has seemingly picked up where it left off last season as an aggressive, consistent unit, but the power play has struggled to get going.

That’s not terribly surprising considering two members of the top unit have missed most of the season so far, but there is still plenty of talent on Florida’s roster, so the excuse only carries so much water.

Over the past few games, the Cats’ have started to look more comfortable while on the man advantage, moving the puck quickly and confidently.

While Maurice is never too worried about the power play early in the season, it’s still nice to see it coming through with some timely tallies.

“It scored a real big goal for us last game, but they were fast tonight,” Maurice said. “I'm not worried about the power play. It was critical tonight, but I'm not worried about it early in the year. Matter of fact, you don't want your power play winning you games as the driving force, because you fool yourself about your five-on-five game, but our penalty kill has been real strong. Our analytics five on five aren't great, nor should they be. If you take a quarter of your payroll out then you're not going to look the same, but we needed that speed tonight. A real credit to those guys, they moved it fast.”

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