Three takeaways: No road trip hangover for high-scoring Panthers, Uvis Balinskis standing out for right reasons

The good fortunes that found the Florida Panthers during their recent road trip have apparently followed them home.

That seemed apparent during Florida’s impressive 6-2 trouncing of the Nashville Predators on Thursday night.

While it was the Panthers’ sixth straight win, it feels like the Cats are just starting to find their groove.

This was only the third game where you could say Florida was playing with a fully healthy roster, yet they were able to maintain while dealing with injuries and continued picking up points.

Now that everyone is available, the Cats can start working on their chemistry and consistency and become that much scarier of an opponent for the rest of the NHL.

Let’s get to Thursday’s takeaways:

NO ROAD TRIP HANGOVER

One of the questions hovering over the Panthers as they prepared to face Nashville was whether there would be any kind of lag in their play.

Generally, teams have a hard time winning the first home game after a road trip, and that seemed to be exacerbated due to Florida having been on the road for several weeks and traveling to and from Finland for the NHL Global Series.

Well, it took the Panthers all of about five minutes to jump out to a 2-0 lead and show that there was zero rust for them to work off after returning from their roadie.

“That's the big concern, because you're not sure, and it's not like any other long road trip,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “You've got probably a seven-hour time change there, but we looked right yesterday. I think our team performance group, those guys have been great about all the things that you need to do to try to mitigate the time change. We looked right and we catch them on back-to-back. That doesn't happen too many times this year where we're going to play a tired team, so we had to take advantage of that and be sharp. It took some work and some effort by our team. I really liked the way we started that game. I like the way we played the game.”

PANTHERS SCORING SOME GOALS

If there’s one thing the Panthers have been doing well this season its putting the puck in the det.

Despite the injury issues that have kept several key players out of the lineup during the first weeks of the season, Florida has still been able to find production across the roster.

Through their first 14 games, the Panthers are averaging 3.86 goals per game, good for fifth in the NHL.

During their current six-game winning streak, Florida has scored 30 goals. For those who were told there would be no math, that averages out to five goals per game.

Between upgrades in the bottom six and the maturation of Anton Lundell, the Panthers are just deeper at forward than they were a season ago.

“I haven't been concerned about our offensive game,” Maurice said. “I think healthy, we are a better offensive forward group than we were last year. Most of that, I think, comes from – certainly some of the new guys will help – but it's Anton Lundell. That line now can score, and they can be a difference maker. And Anton, it took him a long time last year to get it going offensively. So we feel our forward group can score goals. We spend way more time talking about the defensive side of the game, and interestingly enough, as soon as you do that, you start scoring more goals.”

UVIS’ BIGGEST FAN

You’d be hard pressed to find something wrong with the way Uvis Balinskis has been playing for the Panthers.

Defensively, he’s sound, he’s aggressive, he’s quick with the puck and he doesn’t get caught out of position.

His hockey IQ has proven to be quite high, and the effort and dedication is always at the maximum level.

He’s been an amazing find for Florida, and nobody has been happier than Maurice.

Every time he gets to answer an question about Balinskis, Maurice has some excellent things to say, and Thursday night was no different.

“He starts with this incredible base of really intense hockey,” Maurice said. “He plays hard, and he's wired into it, so when he gets the power play, doesn't slow down from that. He's got some poise with the puck, but he plays at a high pace, and he gets it on and off a stick. He doesn't slow the power play down, so it's a lot like his 5-on-5 game. We don't know what his ceiling is. He's really in his first full NHL year where he's getting opportunity to run big minutes. I can't say enough about him in what he did for us with our injuries and some of the challenges we had. He played left, right and defense in one game, and didn't bat an eyelash. He just went after it in every shift, regardless of what we asked of him. I'm glad he's getting some solid minutes on the blue line and some points to feel good about.”

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