After starting season on the road, Florida Panthers ‘jacked up’ for home opener
Matthew Tkachuk has been waiting for this moment. He’s ready to hear the roar of the home crowd again, especially since it has been almost four months since the Florida Panthers played their most recent meaningful game at the newly named Amerant Bank Arena when they were playing in the Stanley Cup Final where they ultimately lost to the Vegas Golden Knights in five games.
That moment comes Thursday, when the Panthers play their home opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs, with puck drop scheduled for 7 p.m., to kick off a four-game homestand. The Panthers began the season with a three-game road trip, dropping games to the Minnesota Wild 2-0 and Winnipeg Jets 6-4 before capping the trip with a 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils.
“We’re just so jacked up to play at home in front of our fans,” Tkachuk said. “There’s nothing better in my opinion. It’s been a long time coming. Especially starting on the road, you’re just itching to get back here and I think we feel really good about ourselves and the fact that we get to play in front of them.”
There will be some fanfare before the game starts.
Most notably, the team will unfurl an Eastern Conference champion banner, a reminder of not only what the team accomplished last year but what work still needs to be done to take that final step and bring the Stanley Cup to South Florida.
“It’s definitely a little bit of a sign of the success that you had last year, and it’s definitely no little feat,” Tkachuk said. “That was big for us to get that and keep moving the needle with this organization and continue having success. We know what the last piece of the puzzle is after last year and what to do to finish the job, but it’s definitely going to be a harder road to get there.”
While the 1-2-0 record to start the season is an early setback, as are the lingering injuries to defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour (both out until mid December after offseason shoulder surgery) and center Sam Bennett (lower body), the Panthers have liked what they have seen beyond the results.
New players, particularly forward Evan Rodrigues and defensemen Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Dmitry Kulikov and Niko Mikkola, have integrated themselves well and begun to show chemistry with their new teammates.
The Panthers outshot opponents 76-62 on the road trip and were competitive if not dominant for all but two of their first nine periods. Six of the 11 goals they gave up came in the second period of their loss to Winnipeg and the third period of their win against New Jersey.
And all three games came against teams that made the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season.
“I’m all right with where we’re at,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said, adding that at this stage of the season “it’s more how you play and if you have faith in how you play — and I do.”
Now, the Panthers bring that to their home ice, where they had their share of success last season.
Florida went 23-13-5 at home during the regular season last year and then followed up by winning five of their nine home playoff games — including a pair of overtime thrillers. They averaged 19,781 fans per home playoff game, just above the arena’s listed capacity of 19,250 for hockey games. They averaged 16,682 fans per game during the regular season.
“The energy that they left us with in the playoffs was something that I’ll remember forever,” Tkachuk said. “As far away as that [playoff run] is for us right now, we get to bring some positive energy from the road trip back here for them and we’re hoping that they’re going to be as good as they were at the end of last year.”
Why Panthers sent Mackie Samoskevich to AHL
The Panthers on Tuesday sent top prospect Mackie Samoskevich to the Charlotte Checkers, their American Hockey League Affiliate, ending his brief first stint in the NHL after just two games.
In those outings, the winger took four shots on goal, averaged 14 minutes and 43 seconds of ice time and was part of Florida’s second power-play unit.
He was a healthy scratch in Florida’s 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils on Monday, with Maurice opting to have fellow rookie Justin Sourdif make his NHL debut that night.
“We thought for the first road trip, we’ll bring both of them instead of having a veteran and only bringing one. We thought they both deserved to go,” Maurice said. “I was going to get both in [games] in the block.”
Maurice has said on multiple occasions that both Sourdif and Samoskevich needed to have steady playing time this season, whether that was at the NHL level or in the AHL with Charlotte.
With that, one of the two had to go down.
This time, it was Samoskevich.
“He goes because he has to play,” Maurice said. “Neither of those players will play as the 13th forward here.”
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