Happy New Year!

The Panthers closed out 2022 in a style that was fitting of their current season’s play. After erupting offensively with a 7-2 win over Montreal, the Cats were shutout by the Carolina Hurricanes in a 0-4 loss.

Granted, the Canes are the #2 team in the league and are stellar 5-on-5 (probably the best in the business). They’re a top dog defensively, playing a suffocating system that makes it very difficult for the opposition to get anything going. Combine all this with solid goaltending and Carolina is a fine-tuned machine. A real “wagon” as the kids say.

Ironically, the one area of weakness the Hurricanes have is special teams. If the Panthers were going to gain any kind of edge against them Friday night, it would have been to stop the Canes on the PP and take advantage of any man advantages Carolina might have given them.

Well…Florida didn’t do either.

In fact, they did the opposite on special teams. The Cats allowed the Hurricanes to go 3-for-5 on the man advantage, while Florida went 0-for-6 on the PP.

Despite the terrible play of special teams — which was the difference in the game — and lack of fire at points, there were some good chances from the Panthers side of things (Bennett in particular had a good game), but they were bested by the stellar play of Antii Raanta in net.

And with that loss, the Panthers slip below .500 at 16-17-4 as they welcome the 19-12-6 New York Rangers for an early afternoon game to kick off the new year.

The Rags are on a two-game losing streak after dropping a 6th round shootout game to the Tampa Bay Lightning prior to today’s game.

New York is fast and posses a good PP. Igor Shesterkin has been solid in net with a 17-6-0 record, 2.41 GAA, and a .918 SV%. We’ll also see former-Cat Vinny Trocheck (boo!).

Per reports, Maurice has been very angry since the Carolina loss and worked the Cats hard on Saturday in a full practice, something that rarely happens when a team is coming off back-to-back games.

When asked about today’s game, Maurice responded:

“We’ll have to work a hell of a lot harder than we did in Carolina.”

The Cats have somewhat of a “do over” opportunity here with the new year (though they don’t really deserve it). They can put 2022 in the metaphorical rear view mirror and start 2023 off right with a win today. Will they be able to do it? Ehh…I’m not too confident. We have seen a large enough sample size to know their current identity is one lacking in intensity and consistency. I’m not sure how you change that. While it’s easy to blame the coach for those items (and maybe a change would help), the players are also responsible. There’s a lot of guys dogging it and going through the motions out there. It’s just not an ideal situation all around right now for Florida…

Who gets the nod for Florida in net?

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Go Panthers!

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