The Florida Panthers get to head out on their final multi-game road trip with a chip on their collective shoulder thanks to Sunday’s game in Sunrise.
Florida fell behind not once, not twice, but three times to the visiting Montreal Canadiens, losing at home for the first time since Feb. 22.
While the Panthers didn’t necessarily play a bad game, they stumbled in a couple key areas and just couldn’t find their footing in a very un-Florida-like third period.
Let’s get to Sunday’s takeaways.
WHAT WENT WRONG
A couple of areas really stand out when looking over Florida’s loss to the Canadiens.
Going just 1-for-3 on the penalty kill, an area Florida has been overall quite excellent for several weeks now, was a big kick in the gut.
The Panthers fell behind 1-0 and 2-1 on Sunday, with both goals against coming on the power play.
They also put only 26 shots on net despite getting off an additional 51 attempts.
“The two power play goals will be the biggest piece, and then we had 30 (of our shots) blocked tonight, missed the net by another 20 or so, so we let a lot of offense die in that game,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “But it's the penalty kill, which has been incredibly good for us. We got a tough break on the second one, but that'll be the decider.”
DECENT AT EVEN STRENGTH
Florida outscored Montreal 2-1 when playing at 5-on-5 on Sunday.
Unfortunately, Florida’s aforementioned penalty kill was off its usual game, and that proved to be the difference in the game.
There was still a strong foundation for what could have been a solid Panthers-like outing, which bodes well for Florida’s chance to clean a few things up before they hit the ice again.
“The first one, both teams are going to come out a little bit hot,” said Maurice. “I don't think there was much had by either team five-on-five. We battled back and scored right away and kind of did that again. Five-on-five was okay, but we're not bragging about it, for sure.”
QUICK TURNAROUND, SORT OF
Generally, after a game like this, you’ll go through the video, take your lumps and move on to the next one.
In this case, Florida and Montreal are playing a home-and-home so they’re going to right back at it again on Tuesday.
It’s a small taste of what a playoff series would feel like.
We’ll see how well the Panthers, who have done a pretty decent job when it comes to winning playoff series in recent years, respond to the loss.
“We'll deal with tonight, we'll deal with it tomorrow, and then we'll leave it there and get on to the next one,” said Maurice.
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