Three takeaways: Florida wastes strong start, penalty kill struggles mightily

The Florida Panthers will go back to the drawing board following their latest frustrating defeat.

Florida welcomed a Detroit Red Wings team to Sunrise that is playing some strong hockey over the past several weeks, and boy did they come ready to play.

While the Panthers ultimately didn’t do themselves many favors, credit to the Red Wings for taking advantage when given the opportunity and earning a tough road two points.

There are several things Florida will want to clean up after this one.

Here are Thursday’s takeaways:

A SOLID, PHYSICAL START

The game began pretty well for the Panthers, which is usually an indicator that it’s going to be a good night for the Cats.

That was not the case here.

Florida continuously put themselves behind the eight ball with self-inflicted wounds, and the result was a streaking team running you out of your own building.

“I liked our energy when we came out, our physicality and our focus,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “Then we get into the second period, they score, we answer back, they score again. That's both in the first 10 minutes and I think that took a little bit of the life out of our game. Then when it goes to 4-2, now you're behind it.”

ROUGH GAME TO TAKE PENALTIES

Staying out of the penalty box has been an issue for Florida in recent weeks.

They briefly cleaned it up during Tuesday’s win in New Jersey, and there was surely a focus on doing the same against Detroit and their red-hot power play ahead of Thursday’s matchup in Sunrise.

Alas, not only did the Panthers take four minor penalties – two of which were in the offensive zone – their penalty kill was only successful on one of those four Detroit power plays.

“We've got to kill the penalties that we take,” said Maurice. “We're going to do everything we can to stay out of the penalty box, but we had a tough night on the kill. Two of them are deflected, I'm not looking at Sergei (Bobrovsky) on those. They're just kind of those unusual things that happen, but a team that's just absolutely on fire on the power play, those things are all going their way. The third one, we’ve got to get a clear on that. We were in zone for almost two minutes and those guys are gassed, but we got to get clear on that one, and that's the entire story of the game.”

NOT BOB’S NIGHT

It was a little surprising to see Sergei Bobrovsky pulled from the game with 4:19 to go in the second period.

While yes, he had allowed four goals on just 15 shots, it wasn’t like was playing poorly.

As Maurice explained after the game, sometimes you just want to get your goalie out of a bad situation.

I would leave Sergei any day, all day long in a game that we've got to come back and battle back,” Maurice said. “Some nights, guys get unlucky in the net, and when you get two deflections like that – he's right, his positioning is solid – and then it just comes through him on the last one, it's not his night. You're looking for a little change, bought a little bit of time on the bench, but not a reflection certainly how I feel about him or how he plays for us. Sergei doesn't get pulled very often and it wasn't a ‘I got to get him out of there for us to win the game.’”

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