Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Harper shores up 4th line
A good chunk of the Florida Panthers’ offseason plan was to bolster scoring on the third and fourth lines, so they went out and got Jonathan Marchessault, Colton Sceviour and Jared McCann.
Due to injuries, Marchessault was shifted from the bottom-six to the top line with Jaromir Jagr and Aleksander Barkov. The fourth line entered Saturday’s game with two assists and no goals, and Marchessault now leads the team with three goals and seven points.
Perhaps overlooked this summer was the re-signing of career minor leaguer Shane Harper on July 1, the first day of free agency, to a one-year, $650,000 contract.
Undrafted and seemingly unwanted by the Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues and for a while the Panthers, the 27-year-old right wing played 403 games in the AHL and ECHL for sixplus years, the respective equivalent of Triple-A and Double-A baseball minor leagues. Harper, along with 19-year-old center Denis Malgin, were the two major surprises to make the Panthers’ opening-night roster coming out of training camp.
Harper never gave up on himself or his NHL dreams and on Saturday he scored his first two goals to lead the Panthers to a 5-2 victory over the improved Colorado Avalanche.
“There’s times when you think like that for sure, but then there’s also … I’ve been pretty confident in myself that it would come,” Harper said before holding up his milestone puck Saturday. “I always thought I just needed to get my shot. But, yeah, sometimes there is doubt over the years, but you just have to have confidence in yourself.”
Harper scored 32 goals for the Chicago Wolves just two seasons ago, but never got a sniff from the Blues.
“My Dad looked at some website that said I was the 600th ECHLer to play in the NHL, so that’s something I take some pride in,” said Harper, who played for the Greenville [S.C] Warriors and the Trenton [N.J.] Titans.
“If you go to the ECHL, people think there’s no coming back from that, but you just got to believe in yourself.”
Panthers coach Gerard Gallant said that twice last season he wanted to call up Harper from the Portland Pirates, then Florida’s AHL affiliate, but he was injured on both occasions.
“He found the back of the net twice and that was real good,” Gallant said. “The kid played hard, he works hard and going hard to the net and you get rewarded. ... You cheer for the guys that haven’t scored a goal in the NHL before and it makes your team feel real good about it.”
The 5-foot-11 Harper leads the Panthers with 10 hits and 11 penalty minutes.
“I think he should stick to the goal scoring,” said Panthers center Vincent Trocheck, who scored his third goal. “I think you guys all know how tight of a group we have in here, so to see him, 27 years old, finally get his first NHL goal and pop two in the same game, it’s definitely exciting to see that.”
Rau’s screen play
Panthers rookie Kyle Rau played his first game of the season after being recalled from Springfield (AHL) on Friday to replace injured forward Jussi Jokinen (lower body).
The 5-8 forward set a screen that helped Jason Demers’ long slap shot get past Semyon Varlamov. However, the goal was overturned on a coach’s challenge because Trocheck was offside.
Ekblad scores first
Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad notched his first goal and point of the season, but the puck bounced out so quickly he wanted to make sure the referee knew it was legitimate so he banged his stick several times on top of the goal cage.
“Honestly, I didn’t know whether it was or wasn’t a goal because I didn’t really see it myself, but I was kind of just pointing like, please stop, let it be a goal. Please.” Ekblad said.
Ekblad’s 28th career goal tied him for fifth place among Panthers defensemen with Brian Campbell, Bryan McCabe and Dmitry Kulikov.