Ekblad ‘playing his best hockey now’
Perhaps no Panthers player has been as streaky a goal-scorer as defenseman Aaron Ekblad this season.
Earlier this season, the 22-year-old defenseman went 11 games without a goal. Then he exploded for three goals in three games. After that, a drought of 12 games hit. Now, Ekblad has six goals in his past 13 games. The only Panther with more is Evgenii Dadonov with seven in the same stretch.
“I think he had some ups and downs during his season this year, but he’s playing his best hockey now, which is a good thing for us,” Panthers coach Bob Boughner said.
Some of Ekblad’s success can be attributed to his role on the second power-play unit, with three of his past four goals coming with the man-advantage. But Boughner pointed to Ekblad becoming more comfortable with a new role this season as a top-pair, shutdown defenseman.
This is Ekblad’s fourth season in the NHL, but the first in which his role as a defenseman has taken center stage over his role as a points producer. He’s started 55.2 percent of shifts in the defensive zone this season. Last year, it was only 40.3 percent.
This year, he’s averaging 2:25 per game shorthanded. In his first three seasons, he’d never averaged more than 48 seconds per game on the penalty kill.
“It was more of an offensive role he had before,” Boughner said. “Now, he’s becoming a better two-way defenseman and the points are starting to come now in the second half of the season. I think that’s just because he had so much to deal with in such a new role for the first few months of the season, maybe his offense suffered a little bit.”
In addition to his recent scoring touch (seven points in the past five games), Ekblad’s advanced stats have been good as well. Since the All-Star break, no opponent has had more shot attempts than the Panthers with Ekblad on the ice.
Over the past seven games entering Saturday’s contest in Calgary, Ekblad was on the ice for 139 Florida attempts and 108 opposing attempts (56.3 percent).
Better matchups
Entering Saturday night’s game against Calgary, the Panthers carried a fourgame road winning streak. Since the All-Star break, Florida was perfect on the road, beating the Islanders, Buffalo, Edmonton and Vancouver.
Part of the success may be due to a deepened top two lines that make it tougher for opposing coaches to matchup against the Panthers, even with last change. Boughner reassembled his top two lines to add more balance to his lineup, with Dadonov, Aleksander Barkov and Nick Bjugstad on the top line and Jonathan Huberdeau, Vincent Trocheck and Denis Malgin on the second line.
Occasionally, like in a win over Edmonton, the second line has been asked to defend the opponent’s top line.
“I feel good with Malgy playing on that line because Malgy’s pretty good defensively and Huby can do it when he wants to as well,” Boughner said. “I don’t feel like I’m getting too many mismatches on the road with this. Maybe before, when I have all the big guys on the first line, I did get
mismatched sometimes. think that’s helped.”
In the four road games since the break, Barkov has been matched with the top line in three of them.
Vrbata on the block?
Forward Radim Vrbata played in a game for the first time in about three weeks on Wednesday night, and was again in the lineup for Saturday night’s game in Calgary. Vrbata has been a healthy scratch recently in what is likely his last NHL season, and may be on the trading block.
The Panthers received Vrbata’s list of 10 teams he would like to be traded to and is the only pending unrestricted free agent on Florida’s roster. This season, Vrbata has five goals and eight assists in 36 games.
“We’re still looking for some more offense from our third line,” Boughner said. “Vrby’s that guy that can provide that. He made a great play to [Jared] McCann in the second period, set him up in the slot with a no-look pass. Those are things he can do.”