Florida Panthers Look to Right the Ship, Again, vs. Capitals
“We just have to get back to the basics,” Anton Lundell said. “We have to stop trying to do magic tricks right away.”
FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers will, once again, look to right the ship against a sturdy Washington Capitals team.
Even without Alexander Ovechkin, who will miss this game and likely the next few weeks with a leg injury after a collision with Utah’s Jack McBain put his quest for the NHL goals record on Nov. 18, the Capitals still present a challenge.
Florida will have to be up for the task in the midst of a 1-5-0 slide smack dab in the middle of a stretch of five-straight games against playoff teams.
“We demand a certain effort level from our team, and they’ve had two and a half years of giving it pretty consistently every night,” coach Paul Maurice said. “It’s just the tells in the game. We were at 12 or 13 bars or posts in the last six games. I’m not here saying that all we got to do is get those to go in and we love our game, but you see that at those times, pucks are going in off your feet into your net, backdoor stuff, bouncing off your chest and into the net. “
Washington is the second of those five, currently sitting in third place in the Metropolitan Divison at 13-6-1, after the Panthers lost 7-4 to the Colorado Avalanche in a game played very much on their terms.
Under second-year coach Spencer Carbury, the Capitals have been playing a more structured team game that has helped them stay afloat with or without Ovechkin. It certainly helped them through last season, where Ovechkin started the season in an uncharacteristic slump, and a solid young core bolstered up by the offseason acquisitions of Jakub Chychrun and Pierre-Luc Dubois has not shown signs of faltering despite two-straight losses to the Avalanche and New Jersey Devils.
“We are going to see a lot more of that tonight,” Maurice said. “They are going to be net-front and slot all night long and we are going to have to clean that area up.
For the Panthers to win, they need to come to the rink with the same intensity they are used to bringing and play the game the way they know how.
“We just have to get back to the basics,” Anton Lundell said. “We have to stop trying to do magic tricks right away. It’ll come when it comes and we have to grind it out, stick together, stay positive, and just go out there and play together.”
Maurice is not disappointed with his team’s effort — in fact, there might be a bit too much of it going on.
For the Panthers to get back on track, they are going to have to simplify their game and try to do a little less. That is what worked for them when they won the Stanley Cup last season, after all.
“We are not really concerned about the compete level,” Maurice said. “Over the course of the year, some nights you are going to be a little bit behind it, your legs aren’t quite there and then there’s a structural part of your game, guys missing assignments on transition.
“That part, there’s not really an issue for us there. It’s happened once, but for us, we’re trying and it’s bouncing all over the place right now. And trying sometimes doesn’t make it better.”
The Panthers can learn a thing or two from this stretch, just like they did during the lull they started Maurice’s first season as head coach in and the uncharacteristic losses they took last season.
Both of those seasons ended in Stanley Cup Final berths.
“Every team has to go through these stretches,” Maurice said. “If you don’t, you have a 130-point season and the first bad thing that happens to you in the playoffs, you’re in trouble. We’re in one right now. The effort has been pretty good but I just think we need to get a little closer to each other and we can move a little better.”
THE NEWS
Spencer Knight will start in goal for the Panthers against the Capitals tonight.
Jonah Gadjovich is “day-to-day” with an upper-body injury after tweaking something in Saturday night’s loss to the Avalanche. He and Adam Boqvist are out of the lineup, Tomas Nosek and Nate Schmidt will draw in.
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Today’s game will air at 7:00 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted on Scripps Sports and the Panthers Plus app. It will also be available on ESPN+ for out-of-market viewers.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Evan Rodrigues — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Mackie Samoskevich
A.J. Greer — Tomas Nosek — Jesper Boqvist
Gustav Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Spencer Knight
Sergei Bobrovsky
Scratched: Adam Boqvist
Injured: Jonah Gadjovich (day-to-day, LBI)
WASHINGTON CAPITALS PROJECTED LINEUP
Aliaksei Protas — Dylan Strome — Tom Wilson
Connor McMichael — Pierre-Luc Dubois — Taylor Raddysh
Hendrix Lapierre — Lars Eller — Andrew Mangiapane
Brandon Duhaime — Nic Dowd — Ivan Miroshnichenko
Martin Fehervary — John Carlson
Rasmus Sandin — Matt Roy
Jakob Chychrun — Trevor van Riemsdyk
Logan Thompson
Charlie Lindgren
(Lines via NHL.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.