Sam Bennett: Florida Panthers ‘Soft’ in Loss to Wild

“We were a little soft tonight,” Bennett said. “Need to be a little bit more physical, a little more engaged in the game.”

SUNRISE, Fla. — Sam Bennett did not mince his words when he was asked what went wrong when the Florida Panthers suffered a 5-1 beatdown from the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday.

“I thought right from the start, we looked pretty good, and then they got a couple and we just got away from our game,” Bennett said. “Got off the forecheck, we were a little too soft tonight, need to be a little bit more physical, more engaged in the game, and we’re just going to regroup from that one.”

It’s not every day a Stanley Cup-winning team uses the word “soft” to describe themselves, but games like that tend to pop up at least once in an 82-game season.

And it was the perfect storm with the Panthers coming off of a stretch of playing seven games in 11 nights, including one with only 10 skaters, while missing two of their biggest stars.

Getting Matthew Tkachuk back in this game did not seem to help much, although he did end his return from a five-game absence with an assist.

The Wild were a team that forced the Panthers into some of their biggest duds last season, beating them 2-0 in the season opener behind a Filip Gustavsson shutout while scoring five power play goals in a 6-4 win in January.

Panthers coach Paul Maurice did not make any excuses for himself, though.

“There is an emotional level you have to get to to play well in an NHL game and we weren’t there,” coach Paul Maurice said. “We weren’t there.”

Maurice did not say the reason for that was because that energy was spent in the Panthers’ comeback victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday or in any of the other six games they played in the two weeks prior — he simply pinned it on himself.

“It’s on me,” he said. “That’s my job. I only really have one. Get your team ready to play. We weren’t ready to play.

“When you have a game where, across the board, your best player is not your best player, the coach didn’t get them right. We had a pretty good idea what they were going to do and they looked they way they were supposed to and they played very well, but we weren’t anywhere near where we need to get to to play at a consistent level.“

Maurice was glad he had some extra job security after that one in the form of a multi-year contract extension he inked before Tuesday night’s game.

“I’m thankful,” he said. “Hopeful, I guess, the ink dried on that thing.”

All jokes aside, it was just one of those nights, and the goals and the numbers tell the story.

The Wild continuously won the net-front battles and screened Sergei Bobrovsky heavily, scoring a few from the net-front before the wheels completely fell off for the 36-year-old netminder.

It’s not like the team in front of him helped him that much.

After the Wild scored two goals in the first period — a deflection from the front of the net from Marco Rossi and a one-timer from Marcus Johansson — and an early power play goal off of another deflection from Matt Boldy, the Panthers shrunk.

Bennett scored Florida’s lone goal, delfecting a cross-crease feed from Carter Verhaeghe with his skate with 8:41 to go in the second period, but that was all the Panthers could muster up.

Bobrovsky was yanked at the start of the third period after allowing a couple of rough ones at the end of the second. He finished the night with five goals against on 16 shots.

On Minnesota’s fourth goal, he was sent way out of position when Kirill Kaprizov faked a wrap-around attempt and instead sent a feed over to Mats Zuccarello to give him a shot at a wide open net with 6:02 to go in the second period.

Joel Eriksson Ek beat Bobrovsky high glove side with a quick wrist shot off the rush 2:07 later.

At that moment, Maurice knew it wasn’t his night either, but the team in front of him was not helping much.

Spencer Knight came in and stopped all six shots he faced in an uneventful third period and the Panthers were handed their first regulation loss since they laid a dud of a similar flavor in a 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Oct. 12.

All they can do now is watch the tape and fix the mistakes they made before flying off to New York for an Eastern Conference final rematch with the Rangers on Thursday.

Namely, figure out how to get back to winning those net-front battles and creating the second-chance opportunities that helped them so much in their 4-3 overtime victory over the Vegas Golden Knights just a few days earlier.

“I think we’re gonna go over it, definitely, and improve on things we can,” Bennett said. “But I think the main thing is that our compete level tonight just wasn’t there. That’s not normal Florida Panther hockey. So, that’s an easy fix.”