The run-and-gun Florida Panthers proved they can still win with defense in Nashville
.JPG "Florida Panthers defenseman Ben Chiarot (8) stops a shot by Nashville Predators center Nick Cousins (21) during the third period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, April 9, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn. The Panthers won 4-1. (AP Photo/Mark Zaleski)")
Andrew Brunette knows it could be easy for his Florida Panthers to tune him out. There are all the usual reasons an NHL team might get a little lazy in the last month of the regular season — fatigue has set in, some opponents have nothing left to play for and nothing will really matter until the Stanley Cup playoffs start, anyway — and then there are the reasons unique to this particular team.
Not only are the Panthers eight points ahead of everyone else in the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division, but they also have the league’s best offense in more than a quarter of a century and are setting records for comeback proficiency. Do a a few garish defensive breakdown or a less-than-perfect period really matter when Florida has been able to use its league-best offense to erase three- and four-goal deficits with some sort of regularity?
“It’s a hard time of year,” interim coach Andrew Brunette confessed Friday. At 48, he was a player only a decade ago and he remembers what it can be like. “There’s individual things, there’s playoffs lurking around the corner, there’s all kind of distractions right now. ... As coaches, we’re on them and they’re like, Well playoffs isn’t for a while. We’ll continue to harp on them and they’ll get tired of hearing us, but they need to hear it.”
The Panthers began the final month of the regular season by having some of their flaws exposed, even as they continued to stack wins. In its first four games of the month, Florida needed to pull off comebacks — including a pair from four goals down — and the Panthers won all four despite giving up an average of 4.5 goals per game. After every one, Brunette expressed some level of his concern and his best players agreed, parroting the same sort of message: They won’t be able to keep winning like this once the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs begin.
On Saturday, they finally got the message. For the first time since March, Florida (51-15-6) won without the help of a comeback and did it by putting together one of its most complete defensive performances of the season.
The Panthers held the Nashville Predators to just 25 shots on goal and eight high-danger chances — tied for their third fewest allowed against a team with a winning record — to win 4-1 in Tennessee. It let Florida win even though it only scored two goals before the Predators emptied their net — the Panthers hadn’t scored so few in a win since January — and had its fewest shots on goal since February.
“We were letting a lot of goals in the last week’s games, so, of course, we need to defend even better. We know how to score goals, but we need to make sure we help the goalies,” rookie center Anton Lundell said Saturday. “We can’t allow the other team to get breakaways, 2-on-1s that much, so I think today we did a lot of better work.”
The comeback win against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday was something close to a nadir for this aspect of Florida’s game. The Panthers gave up 20 high-danger chances — tied for their third most allowed all season — and fell behind by four goals in the second period for the second time in four days. It was one of Florida’s few tests left against a likely playoff team and its defensive effort was “concerning,” Brunette said.
Since then, the Panthers have been better. Florida gave up just seven high-danger chances and one high-danger goal to beat the Buffalo Sabres on Friday. It made a clear effort to play a smarter, less risky game and stuck with the same attitude Saturday in Nashville.
The result has been a dip in its own high-danger chances — the Panthers have averaged just 12.5 in the last two, down from their league-leading average of 14.1 — but its average of 7.5 allowed is significantly improved from their season-long average of 11.9.
In these two wins, Florida made a trade-off to fix its biggest flaw. Now it has 10 games to figure out the perfect balance.
“With our group, if we manage the puck and do the right things,” Brunette said, “we’ll get our opportunities.”
This story was originally published April 10, 2022 at 10:42 AM.
