Matthew Tkachuk ignites offense and brings ‘infectious’ energy to Florida Panthers

Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice spent part of his media session after the game Saturday afternoon discussing the presence of Matthew Tkachuk in the lineup.

Tkachuk did not score in the 6-0 rout of the Carolina Hurricanes, but his actions on the ice bring a certain level of intensity Maurice seems to like.

“Our entire game is better at a certain emotional level, and he is the driver of that,” Maurice said. “All of them are, but Matthew brings an intensity to the game every night. He’s just wired into it. He’s not faking it. That’s just the way he is when the puck is dropped, and that’s infectious.”

If Tkachuk is infectious, the rest of the team is certainly catching what he has. The Panthers scored 12 goals in their back-to-back wins against the Hurricanes, the improved offense coming at a time when Florida needed it the most.

The Panthers needed to pack more of a wallop into their offense and get back into their winning ways.

“It’s not about a kind of almost fixing. It’s okay, the problem is identified. The challenge is, it’s a really hard game to play,” Maurice said. “To play that way every night is very, very difficult. And we’ve been looking for a bit of that emotional well about where do we get the energy to play like that. We haven’t had it. I’m not blind but some of it is there’s about a 10-day block of coming off Finland. But we weren’t bad.”

SPECIAL TEAMS ARE GETTING SPECIAL ONCE AGAIN

Maurice commented Saturday on his special teams units. The special teams are playing the type of hockey the Panthers were playing before the spell against New Jersey. They are taking advantage of power plays and scoring short-handed goals once again.

On Friday night at Carolina, Anton Lundell had a short-handed goal. On Saturday against the Hurricanes, the Cats were 3-for-6 on power plays as Mackie Samoskevich, Aleksander Barkov and Evan Rodrigues all scored while on the man advantage. The Panthers and Spencer Knight also shut down the Hurricanes on their two power play attempts.

“We did penalty kill extremely well and Spencer was real strong,” Maurice said. “The power play kind of changes the game for you.”

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