Florida Panthers: Do Something for Aleksander Barkov

No Florida Panthers fan needed any more confirmation that Aleksander Barkov is one of the best players in hockey.

Perhaps the rest of the NHL, particularly Toronto-centric media, did, so Barkov played one of the best games in his career on Hockey Night in Canada against the Maple Leafs with his first career hat trick while playing nearly half the game.

These sorts of games are becoming the norm for Barkov, who’s being run into the ground by Bob Boughner because he has painted himself to a corner where he has no other option than to play Barkov all the time.

For all of the jokes about Barkov possibly being bionic, what he has to do to get the Florida Panthers to the fringes of respectability is bordering on making Connor McDavid blush.

He’s been in the NHL since 2013-14, has played for five different coaches and made the playoffs once. There’s not much else left for Barkov to do other than win awards and accolades he should’ve won before if not for being on such a bad team.

Watching that game on Saturday poses something critical for the organization: doing something for Sasha.

Barkov is the best player the Panthers have ever had, and it’s not even close. He’s in the prime of his career; one that should net him multiple Lady Byng’s, Selke’s and perhaps a Hart or two down the line, but the Panthers gross incompetence is shrouding his greatness.

His effort to drag the Panthers to a win against a lackluster Leafs effort was nothing short of astounding, and that’s what it takes the Panthers to do to scrape by at this point in a season where they were expected to make the postseason.

If it’s possible for him to do any more than he is doing, perhaps it’ll be time to resuscitate those columns from last year about how Connor McDavid should win the Hart because he kept the Oilers from being historically bad while scratching out his name with Barkov’s.

To not waste the talents and artistry of the best player to ever play for the Florida Panthers, everyone around him has to step up. This isn’t just including the players, but Dale Tallon, Bob Boughner, Jari Kekalainen, Canucks Army, the people selling you tickets and ownership.

Everyone needs to step up their game to another level. Why? Because Barkov deserves some help. He doesn’t deserve playing for a team with no defensive structure, no depth and no clue in front of no fans.

It’s the least anyone taking a cheque from the organization can do to someone who has given everything and then some to them.

Simply put, people need to give him support. Whether it be coaching his line to not play rush hockey from blueline to blueline so he can cycle and dominate as is his strength, Dale Tallon and company giving him some support down the lineup so he doesn’t have to play every difficult minute, or the organization finding a way to get his face out across South Florida so more people will know his greatness, everyone needs to find a way to get on his level.

His genius, his artistry, his sheer will and sisu (a Finnish word meaning courage and bravery) has dragged the Panthers out of the interminable muck, even though barely, just by his presence.

When Toronto-based media asked if Barkov was one of the top 10 best players in the sport and Panthers fans screamed from the Twitter rooftops, “where have you been these past few years?”, it’s not his fault that people outside of the small South Florida hockey bubble weren’t paying attention. They had no need to; the Panthers are bad, after all.

He might not be the most gregarious in front of the media, and he may have typical hockey humble, but there is no doubt that he is asking “why always me” after every game like this.

When he can’t perform at superhuman levels, the Panthers look like a team that wants Jack Hughes very badly. When he is, the Panthers are scraping for competitiveness. When it’s somewhere in the middle, the Panthers are lost at sea.

Barkov has three years left on his contract at $5.9M AAV. When that’s up, he can reasonably ask to nearly double his pay, and the Panthers would be wise to give him everything he wants.

One hopes that he has been to the playoffs more than once by then and is not the league’s best-kept secret by that point too, and at a point, it’s not on him to make that happen.

Everyone around him needs to give him the support, the lift and the sisu he has provided them for years without almost anything coming back to him.

It’s the least anyone can do: do something for Sasha.

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