The Florida Panthers earned an encouraging victory on Wednesday night in Tampa.
Florida made the trip to the west coast with a lineup that only featured a handful of NHL regulars, and they’d find themselves matched up against a Tampa Bay Lightning group that had quite a few recognizable names, including Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, Jake Guentzel, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Not only did the Panthers hold their own, but they nearly shut down and shut out the veteran Bolts squad.
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A late Lightning goal sent the game to overtime, but that just meant the Cats could provide an opportunity for a rewarding finish to a deserving youngster.
Let’s jump into the takeaways:
KNIGHT LOOKS SHARP
Panthers goaltender Spencer Knight got the start on Wednesday and was given the entire game to work with, which ended up being a little bit more than 60 minutes.
Knight was calm, cool and collected in goal, displaying good rebound control and excellent footwork that helped him make a couple point blank saves late in the game.
Barring anything unforeseen happening, all signs point to Knight starting the season as Florida’s second goaltender behind Sergei Bobrovsky.
“He’s just an incredible athlete, and we’re starting to see that,” Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice said of Knight. “I think confidence grows, and now you’re starting to see the physical strength that he has, to get across the ice, to stay down on his pads when he moves. He looked pretty powerful.”
TOP PK UNIT AUDITION
Florida went a perfect 3-for-3 on the penalty kill, and the main forward duo sent over the boards by Maurice was Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen.
The hope is that the two Finnish besties will thrive as a penalty killing unit, and there are early signs that they’ll do just that.
In addition to their solid night against Tampa, Lundell and Luostarinen also helped the Cats go 2-of-2 while down a man during their last preseason outing, Saturday night against Carolina.
We’ve already known that both players are excellent two-way forwards, and Eetu has previously shown he can handle heavy minutes on the PK while delivering positive results.
If Lundell can take on the same kind of workload and continue to look good doing it, it will go a long way toward Florida remaining one of the top penalty killing teams in the league.
“We’d like Lundell and Luostarinen to really become a dominant pair, and for Lundell to step into where (Kevin) Stenlund was last year,” Maurice said. “We’d like to be able to cut back on (Sasha) Barkov and (Sam) Reinhart if we could (on the penalty) kill. We’ve got some good killers in our group.”
BIG NIGHT FOR VILMANIS
Young Sandis Vilmanis had himself a game on Wednesday.
Skating on Florida’s top line with Lundell and Luostarinen, the 20-year-old played over 20 minutes and was the only player on the ice to record two points.
He assisted on Zac Dalpe’s second period power play goal that gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead, and then made a savvy read when following Lundell into the Lightning zone during the opening shift of overtime.
“It was a really great stick by Anton and then a very veteran puck roll, because (Vilmanis) knew Anton wasn’t going to get around Hedman,” Maurice said. “But Vilmanis got up that ice hard, and it’s at the end of a long camp, so we’re starting to see some man strength come into his game. We’re excited about him. He does some things – he’s got a big shot – he does some things that are the things that coaches don’t make better, they’re just good, and he’s got a bunch of that.”
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