Four takeaways from the Florida Panthers’ successful four-game homestand
The Florida Panthers took care of business during their first stint of regular-season games at the newly named Amerant Bank Arena.
Florida went 3-1-0 over the course of its four-game homestand, with wins over the Toronto Maple Leafs (3-1 on Oct. 19), San Jose Sharks (3-1 on Tuesday) and Seattle Kraken (3-2 on Saturday) along with a loss to the Vancouver Canucks (5-3 on Oct. 21).
Here are four takeaways from the homestand.
Establish home ice
The Panthers went 23-13-5 at home last season on their way to sneaking into the playoffs and starting their magical run to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Panthers understand the importance of establishing home ice advantage and winning as much as possible when they are in Sunrise.
“You’ve got to feel good at home,” Maurice said. “You do. Because our travel is different than most other teams’ travel with the amount of miles that we put on an airplane. The road can be a real grind for us. Home has to be a good place and a big chunk of that is just mentally believing that you’re a good home team.”
They took the first step in doing that over the past two weeks. Three of their four games — and two of their three wins — came against teams that made the playoffs last season in Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle.
Winning games ugly
Every Panthers win this season has been by no more than two goals — and the two multi-goal wins only became two-goal leads because of empty-net goals scored in the waning seconds of games.
The Panthers also had to erase early deficits against both the Sharks and the Kraken and managed to momentarily tie their game against the Canucks in the third before ceding two late goals in the loss.
“We have no interest in playing a pretty game,” Maurice said after the home opener against Toronto. “We’ve kind of gotten good at [winning] ugly.”
The top line has serious potential
The Panthers’ top forward line of Aleksander Barkov centering Evan Rodrigues and Sam Reinhart has proven to be effective early this season.
In 52 minutes of ice time together so far this season at full strength, the line has outscored opponents 5-0 with a 31-27 edge in shots on goal. The three are also part of Florida’s top power-play unit along with Matthew Tkachuk and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
The chemistry between Rodrigues and Reinhart in particular has been impressive, with Rodrigues assisting on five of Reinhart’s team-leading seven goals.
The Panthers are starting to get healthier
Florida has played all seven games this season without three key players from its Stanley Cup Final run in center Sam Bennett as well as defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour.
But the trio is making strides to getting back into game action.
Bennett, sidelined by a lower-body injury sustained toward the end of the preseason, joined practice on Thursday but wasn’t fully ready to play on Saturday. The hope is he could be ready for Monday’s game against the Boston Bruins.
Ekblad and Montour, meanwhile, practiced with the team on Sunday — their first in a full team setting since their offseason shoulder surgeries. The original timeline for both players was a mid-December return, but Maurice said there’s now a chance they can come back a couple weeks earlier than that.
