With the first week of preseason out of the way, things are looking good for the Panthers. The returning players are looking every bit as good as last year and are in better shape than they were last year at this time per Head Coach Paul Maurice when he spoke to the media during the first few days of training camp. Hunter St. Martin has made a strong impression with great performances in the rookie showcase and the preseason games he’s played in. Spencer Knight looked solid in the net as did Chris Driedger and the Boqvist brothers got to team up for a goal for the first time in their NHL careers. Overall, things went well this week despite the losses and the fight for the open roster spots is a fierce one.
Nashville Double Header:
The Cats kicked things off in Nashville with a doubleheader where they took both wins. The NHL regulars were split between the two rosters with game one featuring Bennett, Tkachuk, Rodrigues, Lundell, Loustarinen, Mikkola, and Ekblad. Fans also got their first look at newcomer Nate Schmidt and returner Spencer Knight. Knight started in net and stopped all 19 shots he saw before handing the reins over to Cooper Black midway through who stopped five of the seven shots. Neither team scored on special teams, not that there were a lot of special teams to be played in game 1. Sam Bennett scored the first goal of the season for the Panthers with Matthew Tkachuk and Mikulas Hovorka on the assists. Hunter St. Martin put the Cats up 2-0 in the second period off a nice play where he stripped the puck at the net front and buried it past the Predators’ goaltender. Rasmus Asplund made it 3-0 before the second period ended where he made a nice one-timer shot off the feed from Sourdif. The Cats held on in the third period to take the 3-2 win in game 1. Nashville held the advantage in every stat category except blocked shots where Florida had a 17-11 advantage. Things were fairly even in the faceoff dot with the Preds having a slight edge.
Game 2 featured Florida’s dangerous top line of Verhaeghe-Barkov-Reinhart and Forsling and Kulikov as the returning defensemen. Newcomers Adam and Jesper Boqvist, Tomas Nosek, and AJ Greer all made their debut for the Cats. The win was slightly soured by Nosek going hard into the boards and leaving the game; he’s currently out with a week-to-week upper-body injury but HC Paul Maurice specified that it wasn’t a concussion. The second game of the day had a vastly different tone to it than the first as the entire game was plagued by penalties and eventually fighting by the time the third period rolled around. Florida’s powerplay looked strong as it went 3/3 on the night with Josh Davies, Jesper Boqvist, and of course Sam Reinhart all scoring on the man advantage. Will Reinhart score anywhere near 25 goals on the powerplay again this season? That has yet to be seen, it’s certainly possible if the PP Units keep the puck moving and diversify who’s shooting the puck to keep teams from focusing solely on Reinhart. Reinhart’s goal broke the ice as Barkov and Verhaeghe picked up the assists. While Reinhart wasn’t directly in his usual slot spot he was net front and wide open for a pass from Barkov which he tapped in for the goal. Josh Davies got a cross-ice pass from Benning and then threaded the needle with his shot for the Panthers’ second goal of the game with Giles picking up the secondary assist on the play. Jesper Boqvist buried his first goal as a Panther with assists from his brother, Adam, and Reinhart. Reinhart made the pass to Adam who took the shot that Jesper tipped in past Wedgewood. Two minutes later an unassisted goal from Forsling made things 4-0 with just under four minutes to go in the period; Forsling made a long shot from the blue line past the glove of Wedgewood. Nashville finally got on the board with just over two minutes to go in the period off a goal from Jake Lucchini that was also unassisted. A quieter second period on the goal-scoring side saw Patrick Giles pick up his second point of the night off a fantastic feed from Davies back toward Giles who then elevated the puck up past Wedgewood’s glove making the score 5-1. Florida spent some time on the PK as Marek Alscher picked up a penalty for roughing and then Kulikov picked up a pair of penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct and high sticking; Kulikov’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was the result of him jumping in to defend his teammate. The third period was where things got a bit out of hand as there were eight penalties handed out between the two teams. Navrin Mutter got called for both roughing and fighting while AJ Greer got called for tripping, Alscher was called for holding, Jesper Boqvist got called for a high-sticking double minor, and Jonah Gadjovich got called for fighting, instigator, and 10-minute misconduct with about seven minutes left in the game. Gadjovich had been a physical presence all game with a team-leading seven hits, with his contract extension last season he’s looking to be a more permanent guy on the fourth line for the Panthers. Florida once again got burned on the Steven Stamkos one-timer from the final Predators’ powerplay for a final score of 6-2 and the Cats’ second win of the day. The Panthers are looking every bit as strong as they did last year with all the returning players having strong showings in the first two games.
Tampa Bay:
The biggest question to come out of this game is what happened in the third period? And that applies to both teams because the scoring exploded in the final period while the goaltending disappeared. None of Florida’s top-name forwards were playing in this match and the defense only had the Panthers’ new team members of Schmidt and A. Boqvist for regular NHLers. Chris Driedger got the start in the net and finished with an .800 SV% stopping 9 of 12 shots in the half that he played. It was a low SOG for both teams so none of the goalie’s SV% looked good; Johansson ended his night with a .731 SV% for Tampa Bay. Dalpe opened the scoring for Florida with a powerplay goal just under four minutes into the period with both Boqvist brothers getting in on the assists and about a minute later Greer scored to make it 2-0 with Giles and Jesper Boqvist on the assist. Tampa responded with two goals of their own from Raddysh and Paquette-Bisson and the period ended in a 2-2 tie. Raddysh struck again to give Tampa a 2-3 lead but Vilmanis tied things back up about two minutes later; both goals were on the man advantage. The teams were tied at three going into the final period where goal-scoring just didn’t seem to end. Connor Geekie scored a shorty for Tampa to give them the lead but Jesper Boqvist scored his second of the night on that same powerplay in response goal fashion. Huuhtanen then gave the lead back to Tampa just over seven minutes into the period. Florida then rattled off three straight unanswered goals from Skoog, Bjornfot, and McAllister with Hovorka getting the assist on Bjornfot’s goal and Vilmanis getting the assist on Hovorak; Skoog’s goal was unassisted. However, Tampa responded with three straight goals of their own from Groshev, Duke, and Geekie. Geekie scored the game-winner with two seconds left on the clock. Surprisingly there were limited special teams, each side got four powerplays with Florida converting three of theirs into goals and Tampa converting two into goals. Ultimately this was just one of those odd games where everyone seems to score on both sides of the puck. Still, Florida got another solid performance out of Jesper Boqvist, who seems to fit nicely into the Florida system.
Carolina Back-To-Back:
The Panthers finished the week off with a pair of games against the Carolina Hurricanes. Friday’s game was extremely lopsided with Florida’s roster boasting nearly no NHL experience, only Megna and Greer had any significant type of experience, and the rest were all prospects. On the flip side, Carolina had some of their regulars playing including the likes of Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis. Needless to say, the rosters were heavily tilted in Carolina’s favor and the final 8-2 score reflected that. Slavin broke the ice for the Hurricanes in the first period, which was the only goal scored in the first 20 minutes. The second period is when the bleeding started with Carolina scoring four more unanswered goals from Jarvis twice, Walker, and Staal before the Cats finally got on the board with a goal from Oliver Okuliar. The Hurricanes extended their lead back out with Roslovic scoring in the final minute of the period for a 6-1 lead going into the last period. AJ Greer cut the lead to four with a goal in the opening minutes of the final period but Carolina then scored two more goals, one from Carrier and one from Svechnikov, to seal the deal for the 8-2 win. The young players were a little undisciplined as they gave up five powerplays which Carolina converted two into goals, while only getting one powerplay themselves. Overall, Head Coach Paul Maurice said it best in his post-game interview, it’s what he expected given the roster disparity and that no one stood out but no one’s getting cut after this game. He also added that there wasn’t much for them the learn from this one game.
Rounding out this week was one final game against the Hurricanes. This time around the Panthers had some of their roster regulars playing including Lundell, Luostarinen, Kulikov, and Mikkola. Chris Driedger got the start in the net and ended the night with an .871 SV% allowing 4 goals from 31 SOG; it’s worth noting that when Driedger had some of Florida’s best in front of him during the second Nashville game he had a .947 SV% and only allowed 1 goal on 19 SOG. Carolina took a 1-2 lead in the first period getting goals from Jackson Blake and Juha Jaaska. Florida’s goal came from Patrick Giles who’s had a strong preseason and making a good argument for him to play with the main club full-time. The Canes would make the lead 1-4 with two more goals from Jack Drury and Gleb Trikozov in under a minute. But Florida wasn’t about to be a pushover and scored three unanswered goals of their own in the second period from Skoog, Vilmanis, and A. Boqvist to tie the game at four apiece heading into the final period. The last period didn’t break the deadlock and so things went to overtime where Jesper Boqvist scored the game-winner for a 5-4 final score.
My biggest takeaways from this week are that the Boqvist brothers are already making an impact with at least one of them scoring in each game that they’ve played in, Hunter St. Martin and Patrick Giles had strong preseason showings, and the fight for the remaining roster spots is going to be a tight one. With some players out with injury right now there are still some prospects that are getting an extended stay with the big club at the moment. Unfortunately, we don’t know how long Nosek is going to be out but it’ll be awhile with him being week to week at the moment. The goalie fight is still very close in my opinion with both Chris and Spencer having strong showings when they have plenty of NHL regulars in front of them. While we didn’t see much of Florida’s top guys what we did see showed that they’re every bit as good as they were last year. There are still three more preseason games for the Panthers next week before they kick off the season with a home opener against the Boston Bruins.
