SUNRISE, Fla. \u2014 Nobody is crying for the Florida Panthers. They have two Stanley Cups.<\/p>\n
But the rotten luck the two-time champions have had with health has even Paul Maurice shaking his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would caution anyone on assessing any individuals in the context of our year,\u201d the Florida Panthers coach said Thursday morning. \u201cWe\u2019re at 450 tonight in man-games. We\u2019re going to crack 525. The only other team I remember doing that was the Vegas Golden Knights, and they won the Cup the next year. We survived five, six guys out of our lineup the first half of the season, and we were a point out. But we\u2019ve been running seven, eight. It\u2019ll be 11 tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
You would have thought the Boston Bruins would have had their way against a battered team missing, among others, Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Dmitry Kulikov, Anton Lundell, Brad Marchand and Evan Rodrigues.<\/p>\n
They did not.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t respect our opponent tonight,\u201d coach Marco Sturm said after the Bruins\u2019 2-1 loss. \u201cThey had a lot of guys out. We just didn\u2019t do our job. So shame on us today. Yeah, it was a big push in the third. It was a little bit too late. I don\u2019t care who\u2019s in or who\u2019s out. They\u2019re a well-structured team. They played the hard way. We just didn\u2019t. We were not willing to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the Panthers, it has gotten to the point ex-Bruin A.J. Greer, a career fourth-liner, is on the second line. Nolan Foote, Mike Benning and Mikulas Hovorka, who have spent most of the year in the AHL, are now go-to players for Maurice.<\/p>\n
Yet the Panthers\u2019 winning culture and ferociousness on the forecheck have not left the lineup. In the first two periods, the Bruins were victims to Panthers hockey: pucks in deep, players bombing in from all sides, nowhere to hide in the defensive zone.<\/p>\n
The first goal was textbook Florida. Greer, on the forecheck, got in a good lick on Henri Jokiharju. It forced the defenseman to hurry his exit. Jokiharju tried to bump the puck to Pavel Zacha, the low center, but Mackie Samoskevich picked off Jokiharju\u2019s pass. As Samoskevich curled up to the left faceoff dot, Greer went to the front of the net, taking Jokiharju with him. When Samoskevich snapped the puck on goal, Jeremy Swayman had to fight through Jokiharju\u2019s screen. He could not pick up the puck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re as honest of a team as there is out there the way they play,\u201d said Fraser Minten, who scored the Bruins\u2019 lone goal with 26.7 seconds left in the first period. \u201cThey just put it behind you and make you go get it. Just got to be a little bit cleaner on those exits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swayman didn\u2019t have a chance on Florida\u2019s second goal, either. The Panthers worked the Bruins over on the walls and executed their low-to-high game. Minten stepped in front of Greer\u2019s point shot. But Sam Bennett found the rebound and beat Swayman before the goalie could recover from the bounce.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were stubborn between the blue lines in the neutral zone,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t try to put it in. We played on the outside. Everything we\u2019d done was pretty much for nothing. They defend well. That\u2019s a good team, even with some guys out. We weren\u2019t willing to go to hard areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bruins woke up in the third period. They poured 15 pucks on net. Sergei Bobrovsky turned them all aside. There was no miracle comeback like there was against the Columbus Blue Jackets two games earlier.<\/p>\n
But the Bruins saw some third-period offensive traction from Morgan Geekie. He had eight shot attempts in the final 20 minutes. Three of them got on net. His best opportunity, a point-blank wrister after a Florida turnover, went wide.<\/p>\n
Geekie, the Bruins\u2019 leading goal scorer with 34, has not found the back of the net since March 5. Even so, the Bruins have accumulated 21 of 30 possible points within this 15-game segment. They are getting by without Geekie doing his thing. It will be hard to duplicate in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need him in big moments, and he had some chances,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cWe need more from him, too. We all want him to score, too. I know he cares. But those are the moments right now, he has to put that aside. He has to go game by game and stick with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sturm gave Geekie more work, reuniting him with Elias Lindholm and David Pastrnak on the top line. He also put Geekie back on the No. 1 power-play unit.<\/p>\n
If Geekie generates chances like he did in the third period, his goal-scoring slump will end. He wishes it happens soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just feels like tonight, you let everybody down,\u201d Geekie said. \u201cYou have your opportunities. It\u2019s just tough. It\u2019s been a tough stretch. Just try to man up and gut through it. It does help (if) you win. But obviously tonight it stings a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla. \u2014 Nobody is crying for the Florida Panthers. They have two Stanley Cups. But the rotten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5102],"tags":[95,62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-537830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-panthers","11":"tag-floridapanthers","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116338777480365430","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}