‘Girouxberdeau’ is clicking, but Cats have bigger dream
The Panthers’ Claude Giroux, acquired five weeks ago, has found a rhythm with Jonathan Huberdeau. As the playoffs near, their coach is experimenting with them on a ‘dream’ line with Aleksander Barkov.
In their first few games as linemates, Jonathan Huberdeau and Claude Giroux liked to joke that they had “no chemistry whatsoever,” as Giroux quipped April 5. The Florida Panthers didn’t score once while they were on the ice together for 5-on-5 action in their first six games, and were even getting outshot and outchanced by their opponents.
On April 3, Huberdeau finally broke through and scored off an assist from Giroux to ignite a comeback against the Buffalo Sabres, and everything changed. In the next eight games, Florida outscored its opponents 5-1 when the second line — Huberdeau, Sam Bennett and Giroux — was on the ice.
“Maybe it took a couple games,” said forward Sam Reinhart, who plays with Huberdeau and Giroux on the top power-play unit, “but, at the end of the day, that’s not very long.”
The All-Star duo — informally dubbed “Girouxberdeau” — is on a roll and only further solidifies the Panthers’ incredible depth as they stand on the precipice of
the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs.
With only five games left in the regular season, Florida is fortunate not to have much at stake and can focus on continuing to integrate Giroux in the best way possible — whether it’s by playing him next to Huberdeau and Bennett or by taking an even bigger swing and playing Huberdeau and Giroux with star center Aleksander Barkov, as Andrew Brunette did Tuesday in the Panthers’ overtime win against the New York Islanders. On Thursday against the Detroit Red Wings, Brunette even tried Giroux next to Bennett and winger Anthony Duclair.
“You never know,” the interim coach said Thursday. “He might find lightning in a bottle.”
Since he arrived in South Florida from Philadelphia ahead of the trade deadline last month, Giroux has played more than 66 minutes of 5-on-5 action with Huberdeau and Bennett.
Of all lines to play at least 60 minutes of 5-on-5 time on the ice this season, only eight have produced more expected goals per 60 minutes than the Huberdeau-Bennett-Giroux trio.
Huberdeau was already a dark horse contender for the Hart Memorial Trophy when Giroux got to Broward County. Now the All-Star left wing is in pole position to win the Art Ross Trophy after upping his points per game from 1.39 before the trade deadline to 1.79 since.
“Any time you have a chance to play with a player like that,” Giroux said, “you just go out there and try to complement him.”
The Canadians’ chemistry, Brunette said, is mostly a product of their intelligence.
Huberdeau is one of the smartest and most creative players in hockey, and set the NHL record for single-season assists by a left wing this year.
At 34, Giroux is truly a wily veteran who no longer is anywhere near the fastest or strongest player on the ice, but makes up for it by being so good at positioning himself around the net to finish when the defense bends out of shape to cover Huberdeau.
They also maybe have a secret weapon in a common language, Barkov surmised.
“They talk a lot in French, so I don’t understand them,” the Finnish captain joked. “They find each other really well.”
There’s another level the Panthers know they might be able to reach, though. On Tuesday, Brunette took his longest look yet at a line Barkov referred to as “a dream come true.”
For most of the first and second periods against the Islanders, Brunette went with Huberdeau, Barkov and Giroux together on his first line.
It’s a trio he has used a handful of other times — occasionally, he’ll move Barkov down to the second line when Florida gets an offensive-zone faceoff — but never for as long as he did in New York.
The coach called the line an “experiment” he wanted to test out ahead of the playoffs — with his Panthers ahead by so much in the Eastern Conference, Brunette can afford to try different ideas — and it played like a work in progress.
In the 9:54 of 5-on-5 action the three forwards played together, the Islanders actually managed more scoring chances and outscored them 1-0. In their 25:21 of 5-on-5 so far this year, Florida has been outshot 10-7 and trail 6-2 in high-danger chances, although it does have an edge in possession time.
The upside, however, was unmistakable. Whenever they were able to set up in the offensive zone, Huberdeau, Barkov and Giroux sustained long possession and generated multiple scoring chances, especially when defensemen Ben Chiarot and MacKenzie Weegar — the top defensive pairing — were behind them.
If star defenseman Aaron Ekblad is able to return from his right knee injury for the first round of the playoffs, Florida could conceivably roll out a five-man lineup of Ekblad, Weegar, Huberdeau, Barkov and Giroux, with 12 NHL All-Star Games, four top-six Hart Trophy finishes and a top-eight
James Norris Memorial Trophy finish among them.
“It’s great. I’m not going to lie. I think anybody in the world right now that’s watching our games would love to be on the same line with Huberdeau and Giroux,” Barkov said, then joked, “Just the one thing is someone needs to shoot the puck.”
Whether it becomes a fixture of the postseason lineup will depend on how well they play together in the final week of the season and what Bruentte decides he wants to prioritize when the playoffs begin.
For most of the year, his philosophy has been to split up Huberdeau and Barkov — his best forwards — in order to bolster his lineup’s depth, effectively giving Florida two top-line groups.
Usually, the coach has put Barkov and Huberdeau together when his group is in need of a spark or becomes uncharacteristically stagnant on offense.
The “dream-come-true” line might wind up becoming a secret weapon for Brunette to break out whenever things get dicey for Florida, or it might prove to be so dominant it becomes a fixture.
The Panthers consider depth to be their strength and these are two different ways to leverage it: They can put star-level players on multiple lines or trust overqualified complementary pieces to form a line themselves.
On Tuesday, forward Carter Verhaeghe and Duclair — who typically flank Barkov on the top line — swapped places with Huberdeau and Giroux on the second line, and helped make up Flor- ida’s most productive line with a 10-2 advantage in shots, a 9-2 advantage in scoring chances and a 6-0 advantage in high-danger chances.
“We’re very fortunate to have as much talent as you have,” Brunette said. “We’re trying some differ- ent things.”