Florida Panthers Found Their Game; Can They Sustain It?

The Florida Panthers found their game over the past three games, but maintaining the emotional level they played with is key in sustaining it.

The Florida Panthers have gotten their bite back.

After hitting a 1-6-0 slide, the Panthers took three consecutive victories over the weekend against two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference to jump back into first place in the Atlantic Division.

And they were every bit as dominant in the process.

Over the course of the three-game winning streak, the Panthers have outscored their opponents 17-4, have operated at a 38.5 percent clip on the power play and have seen a goals-against per game that ballooned to over five during that losing skid go down to 1.33 during that stretch.

But most importantly, they are playing with the emotional fire and the physicality required to play their style of hockey.

“It’s obviously nice that pucks are going in, but it’s the structure in which we play in that gives us those opportunities,” Aaron Ekblad said. “The transition game is really important to us and making sure we give up nothing in our end is really important.”

The Panthers dominated by doing just that in their home-and-home set with an elite Carolina Hurricanes team, outscoring them 12-3 while controlling play for long stretches of time.

They did not try playing the run-and-gun game, like they tried and failed to do in a 7-4 loss to the Colorado Avalanche that quickly turned into a track meet last Saturday. They forchecked hard, capitalized on Carolina’s mistakes and everything clicked naturally.

Even when they found themselves deadlocked with the Hurricanes at some point of the second period in both games.

“It took us a bit to get our game, but I think something we do really well is try to get to that game,” Spencer Knight said. “We don’t try to win the game in the first, we try to win series over seven games and we just stick to our system and our structure.”

Florida was a sleeping giant in that seven-game stretch: They lacked emotion, sure, and that comes with the territory of being a defending Stanley Cup champion that has played in numerous important games over the course of back-to-back Cup Final appearances.

If this Panthers team is what shows up down the stretch in the regular season and in the playoffs, they very well have the chance to defend their title.

But they also cannot get too complacent, just as they did when they were fresh off of a seven-game winning streak to enter that emotionless skid in the first place.

Playing as taxing of a style of hockey is near impossible over the course of an 82-game season, but being able to manage that emotional level and overcome adversity before it piles up too high is what is going to be key for Florida as the calendar flips to December.

“That’s how this league works sometimes,” Sam Bennett said. “You are going to have streaks where things are going great and you are going to have times when things are not going well. It’s all about controlling that and not being too high when it’s good and not being too low when it’s bad. You just have to try and keep it even-keeled.

“There’s a lot of belief in this group, so even when things aren’t going great, there is a ton of belief that things are going to be just fine.”

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