‘Pucks aren’t going in for us right now’: Panthers’ erratic offense hitting a low point
Standing at his locker in an otherwise virtually empty home dressing room at Amerant Bank Arena on Thursday night, usually reserved Florida Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen said what most members of the team were probably thinking.
“We’re getting chances. It’s not going our way and we’re just getting frustrated a little bit,” Luostarinen said. “We’re forcing plays, and that’s costing us.”
In the moment, he was talking specifically about the Panthers’ 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, but his comment speaks well beyond one night.
On Thursday, like so many of the Panthers’ other recent losses, the analytics and underlying metrics of Florida’s performance told one story. They showed how the Panthers once again had the edge in shots on goal and scoring attempts against a team beneath them in the standings..
The final score told another tale. It showed how a few mistakes — maybe a mental lapse here and there, maybe pressing too much to make up for previous missed opportunities — magnified and festered and put the Panthers in a position that was once again too much to overcome.
The Panthers had their share of scoring chances but failed to score. Meanwhile, St. Louis turned three Florida giveaways in the second period into three goals.
“We had a talk about getting pucks deep when we needed to and [the Blues] were stubborn. And good on them,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “It’s understandable. We’re gonna crack three posts and we are missing a bunch and they’re squeezing it but it’s not going for you. Which is fine. You can lose games tight, you can lose game where you get a few breaks around the net that you don’t like, but we can’t lose a game like that.”
The loss Thursday was Florida’s fourth in its past five games. Florida has scored one goal or been shut out in each of those four losses despite being the aggressor offensively most nights.
And while Florida has preached being a defense-first team, a troubling trend is brewing on offense that was only amplified on Thursday: The Panthers are either scoring in bunches or not at all, regardless of how consistently they are out-shooting their opponents, and it extends beyond just these past handful of games though.
Dating back to Florida’s 5-4 overtime win against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Nov. 6 — the first time Florida scored five goals in a game this season — the Panthers have gone 13-8-1.
In those 13 wins, the Panthers have scored 58 goals on 405 shots on goal — that’s an average of just under 4.5 goals on 31.2 shots on goal per game. The Panthers have scored at least four goals in 11 of those 13 wins.
In their nine losses in this nearly seven-week stretch, including Thursday, the Panthers have been held to one goal or fewer eight times.
And it’s not for an inability to put the puck on the net when they lose.
The Panthers out-shot St. Louis 39-25 on Thursday but only got one goal — and a fluky one at that when Luostarinen’s attempt to bank the puck off the boards deflected off a curved piece of glass and caromed into St. Louis’ net.
Overall, Florida has a 309-233 edge in shots on goal in those nine losses and just ... eight goals. That’s averaging less than one goal per game despite averaging 34.3 shots on goal in those games.
“I don’t know that the offense is any different in most nights,” Maurice said. “We haven’t gotten into a game yet where there was no offense — where we got out-shot or out-chanced. That hasn’t happened. ... Pucks aren’t going in for us right now. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t because every team goes through a stretch when they’re not scoring. And it’s gonna happen. You’re going to have a game or two where you start looking nothing like you’re supposed to look.”
The Panthers are in the midst of that now.
The question now becomes: What are they going to do to get out of it?
“Stick together,” defeneman Aaron Ekblad said. “That’s always what it is going to be. We are a team first. Things like this are going to happen. They’ve happened before and we found our way out of them. Playing a good, strong, hard game from the beginning is something that’s an identity for our team. That’s going to guide our team out of it.”
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