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Florida Panthers: MacKenzie’s Bid For One Of The Top Goals Of The Season

By Ryan Price

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Was this the “Goal Of The Year”?

Derek MacKenzie’s effort midway through the first period resulted in arguably the nicest goal for the Florida Panthers this season, and maybe for the NHL as a whole.

Per George Richards of the Miami Herald:

"After Shawn Thornton dug out the puck, he passed to Dave Bolland. With MacKenzie yelling for the puck 20 feet away, Bolland sent a blind pass somewhere near where MacKenzie was skating.The Florida center — who slid over to left wing to make room for Bolland on Thursday — dove for the pass and got a piece of his stick on it. MacKenzie put the puck in the corner of the net for a 1-0 lead with 3:32 left in the first.“Bolland made an unbelievable pass,” said MacKenzie, who has five goals this year.“I’ll count the rest of it to luck. Obviously I was trying to time it, get it to the net. We talked about getting some breaks and we’ll chalk that up as a break. I was hoping for a breakaway out of it but the way it worked out, it was a desperation play.”"

The goal was a reward for the Florida Panthers hard-working fourth line, which is often dubbed the “Green Line”. After many hard-working shifts for the combination of Derek MacKenzie, Shawn Thornton, and Tomas Kopecky (who Dave Bolland has subbed in for tonight) over the course of the season, the line finally was rewarded tonight with a goal that was more fancy than hard-working.

Well, maybe a little bit of hard work was involved as well.

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