Panthers quickly rev up to speed in training for restart
Forgive Joel Quenneville if he had his reservations about how smooth the
Panthers’ return to the ice might go this week.
The last time they went more than a week without playing, the Panthers came out of the All-Star break in February, lost seven of nine games and tumbled out of playoff positioning. At the very start of the season when it had gone months without playing a real game, Florida lost five of seven to start the year.
The Panthers’ latest long
The Florida Panthers are two days into their postseason training camp, and coach Joel Quenneville is ‘shocked’ at how well things are going after spending four months away from the ice because of COVID-19.
layoff won’t officially end until next month, when they face the New York Islanders in the qualifying round for the expanded Stanley Cup playoffs, but so far the coach is pleasantly surprised with the way things are going in Coral Springs.
“I was shocked how well it went,” Quenneville said after the Panthers’ first practice of the postseason training camp Monday.
“It didn’t feel like the first practice,” captain Aleksander Barkov said.
“I think we all kind of felt good out there,” fellow center Noel Acciari said.
Day 1 was a success. Day 2 ramped up the action even more. For the first time, all 30 players worked out together to play an intrasquad scrimmage at the Florida Panthers IceDen.
Quenneville’s praise wasn’t quite as effusive as it was a day earlier, but he still found the team’s enthusiasm worth gushing over.
“I thought the guys did all right,” he said. “They worked hard. Technically, there are some areas you can see where we talked about it, but I liked their approach. I liked their enthusiasm. It was an effective day.”
Before the season was halted for more than three months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida was riding a two-game winning streak and felt some minor tweaks to its lines and team philosophies meant a turnaround was on the horizon. Those lines are unchanged so far, with Barkov sharing the top line with wingers Frank Vatrano and Evgenii Dadonov.
After a long layoff, teams can go one of two ways: They can treat the restart as a new beginning or they can try to pick up where they left off. The Panthers are trying their best to achieve the latter.
On Tuesday, the top line impressed as Dadonov opened the scoring by beating starting goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky for the first goal of the day. Bobrovsky was stout the rest of the way and his team wound up winning the scrimmage 3-1 after forwards Erik Haula, Owen Tippett and Acciari all scored.
“We obviously haven’t had that in a while,” Haula said of the live action. “It’s important that we get that right away, get the body acclimated to it and the pace of the play, just getting your brain back into it. Obviously, things are moving fast. The quicker we can get to that game speed inside of your head, the easier the game will get. Take it one day at a time and try to do better every day.”
GAME TIMES ANNOUNCED
The first day of August is shaping up to be one of the busiest days ever on the South Florida sports calendar. The Panthers, Miami Heat and Miami Marlins will all be in action, and the three games are spread out in a way for viewers to spend basically all day glued to their couches.
The NHL announced game times for the qualifying round and Florida will open up the postseason at 4 p.m. against the Islanders.
Games 2 and 3 — on Aug. 4 and 5, respectively — will both start at noon. Game times for a potential Game 4 and 5 are still to be determined.
The Panthers will also play the Tampa Bay Lightning in an exhibition game July 29 at noon.
Aug. 1, for those keeping track, features the Heat’s first seeding game against the Denver Nuggets at 1 p.m., the Panthers’ postseason opener at 4 p.m. and a Marlins game against the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals at 6 p.m.