The Florida Panthers are facing an uphill climb if they hope to salvage anything out of their ongoing four-game road trip.
Consecutive losses in Ottawa and Buffalo, combined with an injury to Sasha Barkov and an illness that’s invaded Matthew Tkachuk’s immune system, have the Cats behind the proverbial eight ball.
Suddenly missing a pair of forwards has left Florida in a bit of a roster bind, as they don’t have the salary cap space to bring up another forward from the AHL.
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If Tkachuk is going to miss any more time – Florida has back-to-back games in Boston and Columbus on Monday and Tuesday – the Panthers will either need to make some kind of roster move or dress 11 forwards and seven defensemen again.
Let’s get to the takeaways from Saturday’s loss to Buffalo.
OFF THEIR GAME…AGAIN
Thursday night in Ottawa the Cats stumbled out of the gate and failed to impose their usual brand of fast, in your face hockey on the Senators until after the opening 20 minutes.
That night, they had Tkachuk and Barkov.
Saturday in Buffalo things played out differently as Florida found their game in pockets, but when the game got to crunch time in the third period, the Sabres did a great job of doing to the Panthers what the Panthers usually do to others.
“We just got caught in a bit of a transition war,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “It wouldn’t be the game that we like to play. We just mishandled a lot of pucks tonight. It’s back-to-back games where we ice a puck that indirectly ended up in the back of our net. So that would be the hands part for two games haven’t been there. I liked our last game in terms of effort, we drove hard, This one, I think we didn’t look like we had as much pushback when we needed it.”
MISSING BIG PIECES
One of the things that make Florida such a formidable opponent is their depth, and the thing that makes their depth so good is the amount of talent at the top.
Taking away not one but two key pieces of the Panthers forwards ranks, it puts the Cats in a bind to provide the same level of energy and quality across four lines.
There is also an impact on special teams, as it cuts out 2/5 of Florida’s top power play and removes an elite penalty killer.
So yeah, the Cats need to play a nearly flawless game to pick up two points without
“We didn’t play a game that you can survive with some guys out of your lineup, but I think we can get better at it,” Maurice said.
NOT KNIGHT’S NIGHT
Spencer Knight got his first taste of NHL game action in 20 months and it did not go particularly well.
Knight allowed four goals on 26 shots. One of his goals against was on a high danger shot, two of them were on medium danger shots and one was on a low danger shot.
On the plus side, he did made five high danger saves, and that’s what he’ll likely keep in mind as he looks to improve in his next outing, which may come as soon as Florida’s back-to-back on Monday and Tuesday.
“We asked him to make some saves, especially in the back half of that game,” Maurice said of Knight. “I think a lot of it he looked solid in. (There were) some communication things with his defense, he hasn’t played with a lot of those guys back there because a bunch of them are new. It was fine. He made some good ones, he’ll probably want one or two of those back, but it’s been a while since he’s been in an NHL net, so we’ll build from there.”
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