What the Florida Panthers are doing wrong

Cape Breton Eagles coach Jon Goyens joined Daily Faceoff Live to chat about what the Florida Panthers are doing wrong in this series after coming off a hot stretch.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Jon, let’s start with what Vegas is doing well. Is this purely Vegas just being too much to handle, or is Florida making some mistakes here?

Jon Goyens: You mentioned it off the top of the show with the odd man rushes and bad pinches. Everything that their forecheck evolved against Carolina and not giving up those odd-man rushes and cutting them in half. Right now, at the rate they are giving up odd-man rushes, they would be ranked 31st in the NHL in the regular season. Where Carolina had them in the top three.

Jon Goyens: What they are not doing is the reload and retreat that they did against Carolina. The other thing is their dumping recovery, they are a high dump in the team, but they are recovering the pucks where it would have them in the bottom five in the regular season. We know Vegas can score in many ways. If you watch the goal to make it 5-1 in Game 2, you’ll notice Carrier comes off the bench early, out of sight and out of mind, and then it seems if it doesn’t go to the net right away, it creates a little too much chaos in terms of their d-zone coverage, and it’s the old saying of, “when in doubt, protect the house.”

Jon Goyens: Then you go to the next goal; there’s a pinch, and it’s a long-distance play; now it looks like it’s a two-on-two, but Karlsson has too much speed, and Montour loses Amadio. But it continues, Staal with a half pinch, he’s protecting the wall, but the wall doesn’t need protecting; Montour wants to switch with Duclair, but I think Montour needs to buy Duclair some more time. Then comes the chaos; you need to stop in the house, but where does the puck go? Right through the dot and Whitecloud moves to the inside, and Duclair tries to block a shot.

You can watch the full episode here…