Weekend Recap: Cats Drop Two Big Games

After winning the first two games on the road trip against the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadians, the Florida Panthers have dropped their last two games, against the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins, to fall back further in the Eastern Conference standings.

Going forward, the team will need to accumulate more points to stay in the wild-card race.

Florida @ Ottawa

On Saturday night, the Florida Panthers had a rare opportunity to jump over the Boston Bruins into the second wild-card position in the Eastern Conference. The Panthers started out the game with good forecheck and work ethic that resulted in a Aleksander Barkov goal 7:38 into the game. Brian Campbell went down the right side and performed his trademark spin-a-rama to get around defensemen Mark Methot, then made a nice pass while skating behind the net to Huberdeau, who then smartly passed it to his right to Barkov. The man nicknamed “Sasha” tucked in the pass for his ninth goal of the season.

From there, the game went south for the Florida Panthers. For the final fifty-three minutes and twenty-two seconds, the Panthers played what coach Gerard Gallant called the “the longest night for me behind the Florida bench this year” (MiamiHerald.com). Goals by Kyle Turris, Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson, and Curtis Lazar would cap off the night for the Ottawa Senators as they would defeat Roberto Luongo and the Panthers 4-1.

Florida Panthers

It is very notable to mention that the referees’ calls were not in the Panthers favor. There were many missed penalties for both sides, but the one call that stung the Cats occurred during the second period, when Senators defensemen Jared Cohen delivered a clear “hit to the head” to Jussi Jokinen. The penalty was only called a two-minute penalty for interference. After the game, it was reported that Mr. Cohen will get a call from the NHL Department of Player Safety on Monday. Senators fans should expect him to sit out a few games as a result of the play.

The Florida Panthers were thoroughly outplayed for most as this game, as the Ottawa Senators threw 39 shots towards Roberto Luongo while the Panthers only fired a mere 22 shots towards third-string goalie Andrew Hammond. In my opinion, if the team would have fired more than 35 shots towards the net, I have a feeling that it would have resulted in a Panthers win.

Florida @ Pittsburgh

The day after arguably their worst game of the season, the Florida Panthers would travel to Pittsburgh to take on the Penguins, who played in St. Louis and beat the Blues 4-2 the night before. With Boston and Philadelphia winning earlier in the day, it turned the game into a “must-win” for the Panthers if they hoped to keep pace in the wild-card race.

For the first forty minutes of the game, the Florida Panthers dominated the pace of play and did not give the Penguins that many scoring chances. The Penguins would end up scoring on their fourth shot of the game, as Kris Letang pushed Tomas Kopecky off the puck and would pass the puck across the goal crease to Patrik Hornqvist. Hornqvist would shoot the puck past Al Montoya to give the Penguins a lead that they would not give up.

The Rat Trick

On February 10th, the Florida Panthers lost Brandon Pirri to injury during a 6-2 victory against the Anaheim Ducks. In the last seven games since that injury occurred, the team has only scored ten goals. That number is why the Panthers have gone 2-4-1 during that stretch. The Panthers will hope to have Pirri, who had scored in five out of his last six games before the injury, back in the lineup during the team’s upcoming seven game home-stand.
The team is quickly falling out of the playoff race. The team behind them, the Philadelphia Flyers, was 13 points out of the playoffs before January 13th. They are now two points behind the Panthers while having gone 5-1-4 over their last ten games (14 out of possible 20 points). The team ahead of them, the Boston Bruins are in the midst of a free-fall. Losers of six out of their last seven games, the Bruins snapped a six-game losing streak against the Chicago Blackhawks. While I predicted that either the Panthers or Flyers will leap-frog over Boston at some point during the remainder of the season, you would be silly to count out the Bruins, as the team still has a number of All-Star players, including goalie Tuukka Rask.
The Panthers goal scoring troubles have been strongly noted, but what has not been strongly noted is where the trouble lies. As previously noted, the team has scored only ten goals in their previous seven games. Out of those ten goals, six of them have been scored by players twenty-six and younger (Three by Nick Bjugstad, and one each by Jimmy Hayes, Steven Kampfer, Aleksander Barkov). If you take Kampfer out of the equation, five out of the ten goals were scored by players under twenty-five years old. The veterans have been the problem for most of the season. As well as the veterans can play defensively, only Brad Boyes and Jussi Jokinen have been able to contribute consistently on the score sheet. That will most likely become the achilles heel for the team, as they will need to solve this problem either before the trade deadline on March 2nd or during the summer.

Coming Up Next

The Florida Panthers will conclude their five-game road trip with a trip to the “Madhouse on Madison”, as the Panthers will start a home-and-home series with the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday, February 24th. While the Blackhawks have been in a slump of their own as of late, the team can not afford to play lightly against arguably the most successful NHL franchise in the last five years. The Panthers will need to take at least one, if not both, of the games against the Blackhawks if they hope to stay in the wild-card race.

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Weekend Recap: Florida Panthers Lose Two Huge Games To Ottawa And Pittsburgh