The Florida Panthers have earned a regular season sweep over their Stanley Cup Final opponents from last June.
Florida defeated the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 on Thursday night at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, a second straight win for the Panthers as they opened a five-game homestand.
While the game was a fun and exciting one to watch from a fan’s perspective, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice wasn’t particularly pleased with his team’s performance.
There was quite a bit of back-and-forth between Florida and Edmonton, much more than the Panthers would like to see, considering they are not a rush team and generally strive to take teams who lean on the rush out of their games.
Don’t be shocked if the Cats don’t snap right back into form on Saturday afternoon when they host the Calgary Flames, as has often been the case when they have these off-nights in terms of style of play.
Let’s get to Thursday’s takeaways:
LUNDELL LINE EXCELS
Over the past month or so, Anton Lundell has really seemed to turn a corner.
The young Finnish center has been positively impacting the game in more and more noticeable ways as the season has progressed, but things have kicked into high gear of late.
Skating with familiar wingers Eetu Luostarinen and Jesper Boqvist, Lundell and his linemates are starting to find some real chemistry as a trio.
Constantly looking for one another and matching each other’s speed has been a key to their success.
“Anton and his two wingers figured out that if they stayed fairly close together, they could make plays on the way up (the ice), and then they could forecheck, and then they could be real good in their own end of the ice, so they never got very far away from each other,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “They’re good players, they’ve got good hands and good things will happen.”
STRONG GAME FROM THIRD D PAIR
Speaking of chemistry, the defensive pairing of Nate Schmidt and Uvis Balinskis has come a long way.
They have been providing Maurice steady, dependable minutes on the blue line at a time the team is striving for consistency.
Over their past four games together, Balinskis and Schmidt have combined for three points on nine shots and a plus-3 on-ice rating.
They both scored against Edmonton on Thursday.
“They started right, and they started fast, and they were physical too,” Maurice said of the pairing. “I think they probably moved the puck better than anybody else from our back end tonight, so that that was good, and then they got up the ice. They played a quick game, so they look good tonight.”
NOT PANTHERS HOCKEY
As tends to happen once every few weeks, the Panthers got caught up playing another team’s game.
It worked out okay for the Cats, clearly, as they still picked up the two points in a game that they probably should have won by multiple goals (Sergei Bobrovsky allowed some softies), but overall, their coach was not very happy with what he saw.
“We started to enjoy a game that we don’t play well,” Maurice said. “We can play it, we won a game on it tonight, right? But it’s not our strength. We didn’t play necessarily to our strength, other than the Lundell line was really good. I didn’t mind the first period, like I thought we were right, and then we got into that sloppy transition game, and we don’t excel in that game.”
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