Verhaeghe relishing role as top-line ‘shooter’
Carter Verhaeghe is trying to change the way he’s wired this year. He has been one of the best role players in the NHL essentially since the moment he debuted for the Florida Panthers back on the first day of the 2020-21 NHL season.
Now, the Panthers are trying to turn the 27-yearold left wing into a star.
“Coach keeps telling me I’m a shooter,” he said Tuesday after scoring twice in Florida’s 5-2 win against the Washington Capitals, “so I’m just trying to shoot the puck.”
Right now, he’s doing it about as well as anyone in the NHL.
Verhaeghe’s two goals against the Capitals gave him 10 for the season to lead the Panthers. He entered Thursday’s home game against the Dallas Stars averaging a point per game, and his nine evenstrength goals were tied for the league lead.
In his fourth season in the NHL, Verhaeghe is on pace to shatter all his previous career highs of 24 goals, 31 assists and 55 points — all set last year.
He’s doing it by taking on a very specific role next to forwards Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, one of the league’s most talented lines.
“Both Barkov and Tkachuk are playmakers,”
coach Paul Maurice said Wednesday. “Carter is a shooter.”
It’s not necessarily the winger’s natural inclination. Even in junior ice hockey, Verhaeghe never scored goals at the rate he is right now and it took until his second year playing with ECHL Missouri — as a prospect for the New York Islanders — for him to become an overpowering scoring threat in the lowest level of the NHL-affiliated minor leagues.
He was a grinder by trade — and his high work rate is still a signature
component of his game — and later his vastly improved speed let him get to the NHL with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Even in his first two years in South Florida, Verhaeghe mostly became a top-line fixture because of how well his high-speed, aggressiveforecheck style fit with what the Panthers wanted to do.
Maurice, in his first year as coach, still wants to play to those strengths, but do it slightly differently, with more structure and less reliance on transition.
On the top line, Verhaeghe
is central to making this style work.
“It’s not even about the decision to shoot the puck. That’s not what we tell Carter,” Maurice said. “We want him to think like a shooter so that you play like a shooter.”
It’s something this top line needs. Barkov is one of the best two-way centers in the league and would rather set up goals than score them himself. Tkachuk has a little bit more of a goalscoring attitude, but he still does it differently, mostly by wreaking havoc around the front of the net.
Verhaeghe’s job, then, is to fit in with those two stars as best as he can.
“Your movements, your actions on the ice are with the idea to get yourself into a position to shoot the puck,” Maurice said. “You don’t have to shoot it. You can make plays on it, but if you’ve got three guys thinking pass-first they’ll play around the outside all night and they’ll hang onto the puck, and it never gets to the net.”
At his current pace, Verhaeghe would set a single-season career mark for goals by midseason and currently ranks in the top 10 of the entire league in goals, with four multigoal games already.
“I’m playing with a couple great players ... who are finding me in crazy spots, and a lot of times I just have to put it in the net,” Verhaeghe said. “Our line’s been good and it’s going in.”
Barkov out: Star center Barkov was out of the lineup for the game against the Stars due to an illness.
The illness is not COVID-19, the Panthers announced. This is the first game Barkov has missed this season after he missed 15 last year with a knee injury.
Center Eric Staal, a sixtime All-Star, took Barkov’s place on the top line.