As injuries continue piling up, five players who are keeping Panthers afloat
The Florida Panthers have been the epitome of the cliched “next man up” mentality this season.
When they have so many players injured, they really don’t have a choice.
The current tally is eight players: Forwards Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich and Cole Schwindt plus defensemen Seth Jones and Dmitry Kulikov. Seven of those eight players (all but Schwindt) were part of the game day roster when Florida clinched its second consecutive Stanley Cup.
Yet even with more than one-third of that lineup currently sidelined, the Panthers still find themselves squarely in contention for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
While they rank seventh in the eight-team Atlantic Division with a 24-18-3 record and 51 points entering Wednesday, the Panthers are actually only two points back of the Toronto Maple Leafs (23-16-7, 53 points) for the Eastern Conference’s second wild card spot and three points behind the Boston Bruins (26-19-2, 54 points) for the first wild card spot. The Eastern Conference standings are extremely tight, with the teams ranked fifth through 12th in the 16-team conference all separated by no more than four points.
The short-handed Panthers have managed to stay in the thick of the playoff race because they have seen several players — some big names, others depth players who have handled bigger roles — step up in key times.
Here are five of those players.
Forward Sam Reinhart
Reinhart is one of the league’s top two-way wingers, a defensive juggernaut who also has a supreme knack for scoring.
While it’s the defensive side of his game that coach Paul Maurice consistently praises and that Reinhart prioritizes, his scoring prowess is perhaps what this Florida lineup has needed most while without so much star power.
And he’s providing it.
Reinhart leads the Panthers and is tied for ninth in the NHL with 24 goals, putting him well on his way for a fifth consecutive 30-goal season since being acquired by Florida. Half of his goals have come on special teams — nine on the power play, three short-handed — and he’s averaging a career high in average ice time (21:19) this season as well.
Center Sam Bennett
After a slow start to the season, Bennett really began to pick things up in mid-November. Since Nov. 17, Bennett has 30 points (13 goals, 17 assists) in 27 games and has a plus-minus rating of plus-5.
He has seven multipoint games in this stretch and went on a career-long nine-game point streak from Dec. 17 to Jan. 4.
Defenseman Niko Mikkola
Mikkola and Jones have statistically been Florida’s top defense pair this season. They’re the only one of Florida’s consistent blue-line duos with a positive goal differential at 5-on-5 (21-18), with Mikkola serving as the more defensive portion of the duo.
Jones is out week-to-week with an upper-body injury, but Mikkola is still serving as a stabilizer on the back end. He’s averaging more than 20 minutes per game and has 48 blocked shots. Florida is holding opponents to about three goals fewer than expected when Mikkola is on the ice with the game at 5-on-5 (28 goals allowed, 31.34 expected goals allowed), according to the advanced hockey statistics website Natural Stat Trick.
Forward A.J. Greer
The physically imposing Greer, whose style fit perfectly on Florida’s fourth line last season, has found his scoring touch.
Greer has primarily played as a middle-six forward this season due to injuries and has responded with the best offensive season of his career. He has a career-high nine goals and has tied a career-high with 17 points through just 45 games played. This includes a pair of multigoal games — the first such outings of his career.
Oh, and he’s still a physical force. Greer leads the Panthers with 113 hits, 22 more than the next closest on the roster (Bennett and Jesper Boqvist each have 91).
Defenseman Uvis Balinskis
Kulikov’s injury two games into the season moved Balinskis from Florida’s extra defenseman on the roster to a regular in the lineup.
Jones’ injury during the Winter Classic on Jan. 2 moved the Latvian defenseman up to Florida’s second defense pair with Mikkola.
Balinskis won’t have gaudy stats, but he has shown the ability to play extra minutes — he’s averaging more than five minutes per game extra since Jones’ injury (19:57) than he was in 30 games prior to it (14:46) — without a noticeable dropoff.
Balinskis has also run Florida’s top power-play unit the past couple games in Jones’ absence and had the primary assist on Reinhart’s goal against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday.
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