Panthers use two-week All-Star break as chance to ‘reset’ and try to fix a glaring issue
The Florida Panthers were already one of the best teams in the league when the 2021-22 NHL season took an extended break around Christmas for the holidays and a league-wide uptick in COVID-19 cases, and they managed to come back even better.
In January, the Panthers averaged five goals per game and they won 14 of 18 between the holiday break and the All-Star break they’re still in the middle of.
When it came back from the holiday pause, Florida was refreshed and healthy, and absolutely transformed on the power play. Now the Panthers, who returned to the ice Friday for the first time in 10 days, are looking for the same sort of bounce after the 2022 NHL All-Star Game.
“That month of January was a lot of games and pretty taxing on us,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said. “It was good to get a little rest and, yeah, it seemed like everybody’s ready to go.”
On Friday, Florida (32-10-5) looked refreshed and so was FLA Live Arena, which featured a pristine set of new boards and glass after some renovations. The Panthers spent time learning the nuances of how the puck might bounce off the new walls and they closed practice with a high-energy drill, with both goals placed on one side of the ice and the rink divided vertically to create constant action in more confined areas.
The break is a good chance to look back at the first half of the season and think about ways to improve. For Florida, it’s more important to just maintain what worked so well in its first 47 games of the season, when it jumped into first place and stayed there throughout most of the year.
It doesn’t mean the Panthers are ready to just settle on keeping up what it did so well in the first half of the season. Brunette spent some of his time off evaluating and singled out one weakness — probably Florida’s most glaring one — after wrapping up practice in Sunrise.
Brunette said the Panthers sometimes “give up goals a little too easily,” and the stats support his concern. Entering Friday, only four teams in the NHL had given up more high-danger chances than Florida.
“There’s some blunders, there’s some mistakes that end up in the back of our net and when you can control a game those are deflating,” Brunette said. “We’ve done an unbelievable job of coming back from those, but I’d love to get rid of some of those because when you get into the nitty-gritty here they’re almost impossible to come back.
“It’s nice to have a refresher. ... This is a good little time to reset and give some thought into it.”
He and the Panthers did the same sort of thing during the Christmas pause, and their power play completely revitalized. In its first 29 games before a COVID outbreak paused their season, Florida converted on just 16.8 percent of its power plays — the seventh-worst mark in the league. Since the break, the Panthers are up to 28.9 percent — the third best mark in the league, entering Friday — and have climbed into the top half of the league at 21.1 percent overall.
It was a major point of emphasis during the three practices at the end of the Christmas break, and it paid off.
“We had a meeting right before we came out of Christmas break and had some goals set that we wanted to do,” star defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “I’m sure we’ll do something similar to that with our game as a whole, not just the power play.”
Injured forwards return for Panthers
The two-week break also gives Florida a chance to get healthy — just the holiday break did — and it expects to have a much deeper group of forwards to choose from Wednesday when its season resumes against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Wingers Patric Hornqvist, Maxim Mamin and Noel Acciari all took part in practice Friday, and Brunette said they should be ready to play next week in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“They’re all on schedule here to get going once we kick off,” the coach said.
Hornqvist and Mamin both sustained injuries in January, and missed multiple games ahead of the break. Mamin, whose injury was unspecified, missed Florida’s last four games before the break and Hornqvist missed eight in a row with an upper-body injury. By the time he returns to the ice Wednesday, Hornqvist will have missed nearly a month for an injury the Panthers said wasn’t too serious — a nice luxury for the 35-year-old right wing.
Acciari, on the other hand, hasn’t played at all this regular season after tearing a pectoral muscle in the preseason. His ability to play both center and right wing will give Brunette a little extra roster flexibility with his bottom two lines.
Hornqvist skated with his usual fourth line Friday, while Mamin and Acciari both worked as extra skaters.
