The Florida Panthers’ stars are finally getting going. Will it translate into wins?
At the end of the mayhem, Sergei Bobrovsky lifted his hands to the sky and held them there as the final buzzer sounded Friday at Little Caesars Arena. It was an uncharacteristic display of emotion for the star goaltender, although, to be fair, moments of excitement have been hard to come by for these Florida Panthers.
When their 3-2 win against the Detroit Red Wings was over, the Panthers each took their turns embracing their goalie, whose 29 saves were one of the biggest reasons they won the opener of another crucial four-game road trip in Michigan.
For Florida, it was far from a picture-perfect win, getting outshot, but also a reminder of what this season still can be. For all their flaws, the Panthers still boast one of the most star-laden rosters in the NHL and a trio of those former All-Stars, including Bobrovsky, drove Florida past the Red Wings.
“He stole the game,” star defenseman Aaron Ekblad said Friday. “They had some fantastic chances and he came up huge.”
So did Ekblad, with two goals — both the go-ahead tally and the game-winner — on the power play and star center Aleksander Barkov, who delivered the primary assist on both of Ekblad’s goals. Throw in another goal from star defenseman Gustav Forsling and an assist from star defenseman Brandon Montour, and the Panthers got key contributions from just about every one of their best players to win in Detroit.
Ultimately, Florida (18-18-4) wants to win because of its depth and with complete efforts, but sometimes it takes individual excellence — something the Panthers lacked a bit too frequently early in the season — and Florida’s last few wins have been powered by some of those great singular performances.
The Panthers’ lone win last week — a rout of the lowly Montreal Canadiens — came after Barkov notched a hat trick in the first period. Their win against the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday in Sunrise came on the strength of a hat trick by right wing Matthew Tkachuk, who was named to the 2023 NHL All-Star Game on Thursday. To put together just its fourth winning streak of the season to start the weekend, Florida got a few more excellent performances from Ekblad, Barkov and Bobrovsky.
After injuries and subpar play plagued a litany of these stars in the first few months of the season, the Panthers’ best players are finally playing like it. Now, Florida needs to make it translate into more wins and will have a chance for its first three-game winning streak of the season Sunday when it faces the Dallas Stars at 3 p.m. at the American Airlines Center in Texas.
“It’s great to score some goals and stuff like that, make some good plays and feel the confidence coming, but you’ve just got to do it every night,” Barkov said last week. “You can’t have any off nights anymore. You’ve got to be better prepared and play the right way against good teams.”
The Stars (23-11-6) certainly qualify, with the best record in the Central Division and a .694 points percentage in Dallas for the sixth best home points percentage in the NHL. Even though the Panthers still lead the NHL in shots per game, there’s no guarantee they’ll outshoot a team like the Stars — even the Red Wings outshot them by 11 — and those games are the ones when the best players need to deliver.
For the last week, those stars have been trending in the right direction.
Before he scored a pair of power-play goals this week, Ekblad hadn’t scored on a power play since before Halloween and only had one all year — in one night, he tripled his power-play goals and scored a full third of his total goals this year. Tkachuk’s hat trick earlier this week was his first for Florida and boosted his season-long point total up to 47 — he has eight points in his last six games. Barkov’s hat trick came in his first game back after missing nearly two weeks and he now has eight points in five games since his return from a lower-body injury — he was averaging fewer than a point per game before his absence.
All three feel a responsibility to lift this team to greater heights.
“I have to be a lot better,” Tkachuk said Tuesday. “I have a lot more to give on another level.”
No skater, however, can make as big an individual difference as a great goalie and Bobrovsky played like his best self at the Red Wings.
It wasn’t an outlier, either. In his last eight starts, Bobrovsky owns a .917 save percentage and notched at least 29 saves in half of those games.
On paper, the Panthers have too much talent to be as bad a team as they are right now. The problem has been those on-paper stars haven’t actually played like they’re expected for most of this season. At least, not until now.
“We’ve got some guys back in the lineup, we’re a lot more healthy now,” Barkov said, “and we have a really good team.”
