Florida Panthers: How They’ve Fared Thus Far At The 2017 IIHF Worlds

As most of you already know, four Florida Panthers are representing the team and their respective countries at the 2017 IIHF World Championship. Nick Bjugstad (USA) and Michael Matheson (CAN) are performing well, while Jason Demers (CAN) and Denis Malgin (SUI) are still looking to get on the score sheet.

Every player will be in action today (5/16), to see where or if they will end up in the quarter finals. I figured, on the last day of preliminaries we could cover how the four participants fared in the first round.

Nick Bjugstad

Big Nick has slotted in nicely on the wing with young guns Clayton Keller and Christian Dvorak. In his best game he had 3 point performance against Latvia, where he’d score a goal and then tack on 2 assists.

Though that’s all the scoring he’s done, Bjugy has still put forth a good effort so far. If he keeps generating chances on his line more points will definitely come. Hopefully with that comes the confidence he needs to bounce back this upcoming season.

Michael Matheson

He coincidentally has the same amount of goals and assists as Bjugstad thus far, however not all of his points came in the same game. If there’s one person at the tournament performing better than Nick Bjugstad, it’s Matheson.

The young defenseman is already pretty experienced at the international level. Now, having played a whole season in the NHL looks very comfortable playing his own game. Even with alternating partners on the third pairing, he’s played strong on a rather weak defensive core.

Jason Demers

While Demers hasn’t been glaringly bad, there’s not many good things to say about his tournament performance. He’s still looking to get on the score sheet for the first time and recently got his first pairing spot taken by Colton Parayko.

Since Canada always seems to go far in these tournaments, he’ll have time to gain some confidence. Getting on the scoreboard is crucial as well, since he’s the only defenseman on team Canada without a point.

Denis Malgin

Malgin has yet to register a point in the tournament thus far, even though he’s the only one from the NHL on his team. He’s played on various lines throughout the preliminary round and was actually a scratch for Switzerland’s big win against Canada.

He’ll play first line center in today’s matchup so look for him to break his pointless slump. Here’s a quote related to this years coaching debacle. From a German article I had to translate, thought fans would find interesting.

"“Gallant took full advantage of me, gave me a lot of ice time,” the 20-year-old looks back. “My self-confidence also rose. Under the new coach I had it hard. Each coach has his own point of view. You can not change that. You just have to stay positive. But that is not easy, if you only play six, eight minutes.”"