Winless in March; Florida Panthers Drop Fourth Straight On Friday
By Joey Bailey
All of these games going down the stretch could be classified as a must win for the Florida Panthers. With the playoff hopes they have left slipping out of their grasps day by day, the team is becoming more and more desperate for some kind of life. The lines were shook up by Tom Rowe and their work was cut out for them against the best team in the west, the Minnesota Wild.
In normal fashion the Panthers were outmatched early by the team who had played just last night in Tampa Bay (Lost 4-1). The Wild would go on to take advantage and make it 1-0, at the 7:50 mark on a Jason Zucker deflection. Just 7 seconds into a power play opportunity the Cats would tie it up at 1. Jonathan Marchessault would get the credit for the goal that ultimately went off Wild Defenseman Ryan Suter and past Darcy Kuemper. They Panthers would not go down quietly in this period at least, Mark Pysyk would get a nice backhand feed from Vincent Trocheck and go right under Kuempers glove arm to make it 2-1 before the end of the first period.
Just when everything seemed to have been going right for the Panthers, another slow start to the period would come back to bite them. Eric Staal would tie things up at 8:07 in the second on a give and go play with Nino Niederreiter. That wouldn’t be all for the Wild, they would go on to take the 3-2 lead on a very weird goal. Jason Pominville went top shelf over James Reimer who was laying still as a statue, almost as if he thought he had the puck covered. Just a little over a minute later Jaromir Jagr would answer for the Cats tying the game at 3, doing what he does best using his body to put up points.
Devan Dubnyk would come in ice cold to play the third for the Wild in replacement of Kuemper. Just about three minutes in Aleksander Barkov would catch Dubnyk out of position playing the puck, than put the puck that ended up on his tape into the empty net. It seemed like things were actually going right for the Cats, wrong. About 3 minutes after the Panthers took the lead Eric Staal would score his second goal of the game off a rebound to tie things up yet again.
After the lone goal in the beginning of the third, the Panthers would continue to apply pressure but were unable to beat Dubnyk. Zach Parise would take the lead back for the Wild with about 5 minutes left in the game on a tap in from a trickling point shot. Even after sending a barrage of shots at Dubnyk with the extra attacker, the Cats were unable to find the back of the net. The Wild would go on to score 2 empty net goals thus the 7-4 final. A very “emotionally draining” game for fans but the boys look ahead to tomorrow at Tampa…
The theme far too often this season has been the team always coming up short of playing a full sixty. As the periods would progress it seemed they would apply more pressure, continuing the plague of slow starts. A win tomorrow would revive some of my confidence but as if right now the playoffs are very far away. For this team they’d need to get really hot, quickly. Frankly I just don’t see it happening but no reason to give up hope, we have the talent to be a playoff team we just haven’t played like so. Jonathan Marchessault said it best “Our season has been a disappointment”.
Next Game: Saturday March 11th @ Tampa Bay 7 PM est