What do Panthers like about Marchment? It was on display vs. Jets. ‘He’s a unique player’
All Bill Zito needed to see from Mason Marchment was two goals.
It was all the left wing had to his name when the Florida Panthers handed him an extension after only 22 games last season and it was all he wound up scoring in his first full regular season in the NHL. He was a 25-year-old undrafted rookie then and the Panthers had Stanley Cup aspirations, and Zito saw a match.
Every team needs a grinder and Marchment is theirs. For the proof, look no further than his two-goal, three-point performance Tuesday against the Winnipeg Jets.
“He’s a unique player for us. He brings a dimension that we don’t have a lot of players like him,” Panthers interim coach Andrew Brunette said Tuesday. “Tonight was his best game by far.”
He scored in the first three minutes, when he tipped a pass from center Anton Lundell past star goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to give Florida a one-goal lead. He scored again 10 minutes later when he cut to the net and ripped a snap shot past Hellebuyck off a feed from forward Reinhart to again put the Panthers up one. In the last three minutes of the first period, he briefly seemed to have his hat trick when his turnaround shot got by Hellebuyck for another one-goal lead, only for replay to clearly show it was deflected by Lundell, leaving Marchment with a primary assist.
Still, it was his the first two-goal game of his career and his first three-point performance, and it helped Florida beat the Jets, 5-3, in Winnipeg. He also added a career-high six shots and three hits, and the Panthers outshot Winnipeg, 7-3, with a 6-2 edge in scoring chances in his line’s 9:43 on the ice.
It was the first time he played next to Lundell and Reinhart since the first few games of the season, and the trio set the tone. After closing out the five-game road trip with the much-needed win, the Panthers (29-9-5) return home Thursday to face the Vegas Golden Knights at 7 p.m. in Sunrise and, in all likelihood, Marchment will be right back with Lundell and Reinhart against the Golden Knights (25-15-3) at FLA Live Arena.
“It was definitely nice to be back together,” Marchment said Tuesday.
Marchment’s start-and-stop season
For Marchment, it mostly has just been good to be back on the ice.
After playing in 10 of Florida’s first 12 games at the start of the year, Marchment missed more than seven weeks with an upper-body injury before finally returning late last month. He played four times between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and then tested positive for COVID-19 and missed six more games.
On Jan. 18, he finally rejoined the lineup for the first game of the Panthers’ road trip and stayed there for all five games. He handed out one assist in the first game — a blowout loss to the Calgary Flames — then didn’t notch another point until Tuesday, when he showcased everything Florida values in him.
Why Panthers value Mason Marchment
At 6-foot-4, he’s the biggest player on the roster, other than part-time veteran Joe Thornton, and he uses his size and reach to create a disruptive presence in front of the nets, with screens and deflections. He’s also an undrafted player — one of only three on the roster — and it too makes him stand out on a team filled with veteran stars, former first-round picks and gifted up-and-comers.
Last year, Marchment was on a two-way contract and still scored twice during the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. Now he has four goals in only 18 games this season as he’s playing on a one-year, $1 million deal.
His value goes far beyond those goals, though.
“He creates a lot of different things with his size, his reach, his tenacity,” Brunette said. “He’s got a real physical presence.”
Said forward Carter Verhaeghe on Tuesday: “He’s an important piece to our team. He’s so strong on the puck, so strong on his stick, and has a really good shot and seems to find good areas.”
It makes everything Florida saw from Marchment during this five-game trip meaningful, not just his stat sheet-stuffing performance Tuesday.
In five games, he put 11 shots on goal and recorded eight hits, and whatever undefinable little things he does have worked, too. He posted a plus-3 on the trip, and the Panthers attempted 21 more shots than their opponents with a 32-21 edge in scoring chances and 14-7 edge in high-danger chances while he was on the ice.
“It took him a few games to get going,” Brunette said. “It was good to see him get a couple goals tonight, and make some plays and gain some confidence because we’re going to need him going forward here.”
