CAPTAIN BARKOV HITS HIS STRIDE
After seven up-and-down years, Aleksander Barkov finally arrived as an NHL superstar in 2021. Next up: A first-round playoff series against the defending Cup champion Lightning.
After seven up-and-down years, the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov finally arrived as an NHL superstar in 2021. Next up: a first-round playoff series against the Lightning.
Aleksander Barkov had gone nonstop as a professional hockey player for almost a decade and then, suddenly, everything stopped.
COVID-19 was becoming a pandemic and the NHL, like everything else in the world, hit the pause button. There was no concrete plan for when hockey would resume.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Barkov did not have a game to look forward to. Instead, he was alone in South Florida — 5,000 miles away from his family in Tampere, Finland — and couldn’t do much but work out, do some makeshift street hockey drills and think.
“You had to spend a lot of time with yourself,” Barkov, 25, told the Miami Herald last week. “That’s what I did. I spent a lot of time with myself, thinking about different stuff and obviously I had so much time that I got to think about so much different stuff.”
It started with hockey, of course, and, for the first time, he could take time to think of everything he’d been through.
At 16, he made his professional debut in the Liiga and became the youngest player to score a point in Finland’s top division. A few months later, he joined Finland for the IIHF World Junior Championship and
I DON’T HAVE TO BE LIKE ANYTHING ELSE. BE MYSELF ON ICE, OFF ICE AND EVERYTHING ELSE WILL COME NATURALLY.
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov
became the second youngest player to score a goal in the tournament.
He was only 17 when the Florida Panthers took him with the No. 3 pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft and had just turned 18 when he made his NHL debut and became the youngest player to score a goal since the 1967 NHL expansion.
He missed the playoffs in his first two seasons, then led the Panthers to their best season ever in 2016 before they bowed out in the first round after setting a franchise record for points, and then he missed the playoffs again for three straight years before the coronavirus pandemic meant an expansion of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs and a place for Florida in the qualifying round.
Barkov and the Panthers went up to Toronto for a week and a half, played in five games and lost to the New York Islanders in four games. Suddenly, hockey stopped again.
“We just finished the season and it was the first time I really could sit down and really think about what actually happened,” Barkov said. “All of a sudden it was my seventh year in the NHL. What really happened? It just took me a while to think about it and realize, ‘OK, this is what happened, this is where I am right now, and then working from there I started thinking like, What do I need to do better? Where do I need to be better?’
“Coming into this season, I felt like a new man.”
Ultimately, he played like one. In a shortened 56-game season, Barkov finished in the top 10 in goals created, goals, shots and points per game. He’s 11th in Corsi percentage and 10th in expected goals percentage for players with at least 560 minutes.
Among forwards, he ranks in the top 10 in time on ice and top 12 in powerplay time on ice, and plays more than a quarter of Florida’s shorthanded minutes. In Barkov’s third season as captain, the Panthers finally are a Stanley Cup contender after setting a franchise record for points percentage and getting the No. 2 seed in the Central Division.
On Sunday, he’ll play in the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2016 when Florida opens the first round against the Tampa Bay Lightning at the BB&T Center in Sunrise.
In the coming months, Barkov could win the Frank J. Selke Trophy, be a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy and, if all goes according to plan, help the Panthers win their first playoff series since 1996.
“Barky represents being a 200-foot player better than anybody in the game with his speed both sides, both ways,” coach Joel Quenneville said. “This year, he’s exemplified that consistency, as well. He’s had a special year in a lot of ways, and his consistency and his professionalism is definitely the best message you can send as a leader to your fellow teammates.”
Defenseman Keith Yandle, who has now played with Barkov for five seasons, said one of his favorite things about being Barkov’s teammates is seeing the way newcomers react to the forward when they first get to see him up close.
By now, the idea of Barkov as one of the league’s most underrated players is a cliche, but he’s certainly still overlooked and the reasons are understandable.
He has only been in the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs once and played in one NHL AllStar Game. He does play in South Florida — not exactly a marquee market for the NHL. His demeanor probably doesn’t do him any favors, either — he’s a self-proclaimed “quiet guy” and admits he’s still growing into the type of leader to speak up “if something needs to be said.”
It all comes together to make him an understated star, more likely to just flash a sheepish smile when he scores a gamewinning goal and jump full-speed into the boards. He doesn’t fit the NHL’s traditional definition of a marketable superstar, even if everyone insists “he’s actually hilarious,” as Yandle put it, and quick with an out-of-nowhere one-liner or knowing grin like he’s a character in “The Office.”
Mason Marchment, who comes from hockeycrazed Toronto where NHL games monopolize the TV every night, realized he knew basically nothing about his captain when he joined the Panthers at the start of the year.
“I was talking to him the other day,” the rookie left wing said Monday. “I was saying, ‘I’ve never seen a Florida Panthers game on TV back home, so I’ve never watched you play. Coming here and playing with you, and playing on the same team as you, you’re a hell of a player.’ ”
Carter Verhaeghe knew Barkov was a two-way menace from the handful of times they played last year when Verhaeghe was on the Lightning. Once he got up close and learned the secret, he was astonished. Barkov’s abnormally long stick — something more suited for a defenseman than a skilled forward — is one-of-a-kind.
“I use a little short stick and I use it because you can stickhandle better with,” the forward said.
“For him to be able to stickhandle with that length of stick and be able to knock pucks down — everything like that — is pretty crazy.”
Even Bill Zito remembers his first conversation with Barkov “like it was yesterday.”
He actually met the center for the first time in bubble, when he was still an assistant general manager for the Columbus Blue Jackets. He was walking around the NHL’s secure zone with Jarmo Kekalainen, the Blue Jackets’ Finnish general manager, and they crossed paths with Barkov.
Kekalainen stopped to chat with his countryman and Zito didn’t even realize who Barkov was at first — fitting for the player often dubbed the league’s “most underrated” by his fellow players.
A few months later, Florida happened to hire Zito and Barkov walked into his new general manager’s office to introduce himself. Very little of the conversation, as Zito recalls, was about hockey.
“He’s such a nice person,” Zito said. “I think he’s one of those people you don’t want to disappoint. … “He’s just an interesting, smart, dynamic individual, who’s a caring guy, thoughtful, funny, intelligent.”
The one promise Zito made to his captain was he “was going to do everything I could to make hockey as fun as I could.”
The conversation — and a frank exit interview with Quenneville — helped inform the final stretch of Barkov’s offseason.
He spent the first fourmonth break, between the pause the postseason restart, holed up by himself at his home in Boca Raton. He spent his second four-month offseason back in Tampere.
It was the longest stretch Barkov was able to spend back home since his NHL career began in
2013. He played tennis with Columbus forward Patrick Laine. He got to skate on his hometown’s outdoor rinks. In a city where hockey rules all, Barkov returned to his roots. The stresses and nonstop grind of a professional career — an often frustrating one, considering the lack of postseason accomplishments — were secondary to the joy of the sport.
He still worked out with Laine nearly every day and the star winger didn’t notice anything different about Barkov’s behavior. Maybe he just knew the true Barkov all along.
“He’s not what everybody thinks he is. If you only look at the media stuff and how he’s presenting himself in the media, you would think he’s a shy guy, doesn’t talk much, but he’s pretty much the opposite,” Laine said. “It’s great to have him as a coach.”
On May 1, the Panthers beat the Chicago Blackhawks and Anthony Duclair put together one of his best all-around performances of the season.
The winger, who signed with Florida as a free agent in the offseason, scored two goals and an assist, and blocked a shot on the other end.
He was always renowned for his speed and goalscoring ability — it helped make him an All-Star last year with the Ottawa Senators — but his defensive performance is significantly improved from his last three seasons, in terms of Evolving-Hockey.com’s goals above replacement. He gave an explanation for the change.
“To be honest, I don’t have to look too far. I look at our captain, the way he plays every given night. It’s pretty special to watch and to be honest I’m just trying to be in his footsteps and do the little things right, do whatever it takes to help the team win,” Duclair said. “He’s a great leader and, even though we’re the same age, a guy I look up to.”
When the 2019-20 NHL season ended with another early exit, Quenneville and Barkov met, and it was clear “we weren’t satisfied.”
Barkov was already renowned for his work ethic and character — he won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 2019 — but the organization needed a cultural reset. Barkov took it partially upon himself, working with a series of skills trainers, nutritionists and strength-and-conditioning coaches in both the United States and Europe.
All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau, who has been with Barkov for the center’s entire career, could tell Barkov was stronger than ever. MacKenzie Weegar, who has played with Barkov since 2016, said “he’s been a lot more talkative, a big leader.”
“I think that’s made him feel a little bit more comfortable on the ice,” the star defenseman said.
Everything feels natural now to Barkov. It was partially a lesson from Quenneville, who has the second-most wins in NHL history and insisted Barkov didn’t need to try to be anything he wasn’t. “Be you,” Quenneville told Barkov, “and don’t change a thing.” He could let his work ethic talk and, as long as he was having fun, everyone would follow.
“I just had to think about who I am, what I’m doing and what I need to do,” Barkov said. “I just thought about different stuff and took all the good things with me, forgot about all the bad things. That’s just who I am and I’m really comfortable being who I am right now with those guys on the team. Be myself. I don’t have to be like anything else. Be myself on ice, off ice and everything else will come naturally.”