The Florida Panthers have not always given goalie Daniil Tarasov the goal support they would like to.
And, sometimes it does not matter in the end.
Tarasov gets the win, anyway.
“He played really well for us at the start of the year and we just couldn’t score for that poor fellow,” Paul Maurice said after Thursday’s 2-1 shootout win in Winnipeg in which Tarasov stopped 19 of 20 shots including both he faced in the skills competition.
”His game was good. I think he has rounded back and figured out he might have to keep it at 1.’’
It took Tarasov a minute to sort of figure that out with the Panthers.
He did not win his first game with the Panthers until his fifth start when Florida scored six for him against Washington.
In Tarasov’s previous four starts, the Panthers scored a grand total of six goals.
Thursday night, Sam Bennett gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead with 1:11 left in the second period.
A turnover deep in the Florida zone led to Winnipeg’s lone goal of the night, with the game eventually going into a shootout.
There, Tarasov stopped both shots he faced; Anton Lundell and Sam Reinhart did the rest.
“It was kind of a tough game for both goalies,” said Tarasov, who is 3-0 in 2026 with wins over Colorado, the Capitals, and Winnipeg. “There wasn’t a lot of action. I was just trying to keep it simple, not give up a lot of rebounds when I got the shots. Be simple with the puck, don’t make risky plays.”
Like all teams, the Panthers have to rely on their backup goalie during the course of a regular season.
Due to the condensed schedule, perhaps Florida is going to lean on Tarasov a little more moving forward.
The Panthers are basically playing every other day — at best — up through the start of the Olympic break which starts after their game in Tampa Bay on Feb. 5.
Once the season restarts, Florida has five sets of back-to-backs with its longest break between games being four days.
That’s only because the team will be flying back home from western Canada where they will play four games in six days starting in Seattle and (sort of) work their way east.
So, yeah, the Panthers are going to need this Tarasov the rest of the way.
“Terry played unbelievable,” Bennett said, “and that’s a big win that we needed. Every time he has stepped in, he has given us a chance to win. That’s all we can ask for.”
ON DECK: GAME No. 50
FLORIDA PANTHERS AT MINNESOTA WILD
