The Panthers (53 points) sit four points out of the second wild card from the Eastern Conference, with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals all ahead of them in the chase. They are nearly as close to the New York Rangers, who are last in the East with 48 points, as they are to the Buffalo Sabres (57), who currently have the second wild card.<\/p>\n
But they have Tkachuk back. That matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great,\u201d defenseman Aaron Ekblad<\/a> said. \u201cYou see some of the plays he makes, he\u2019s incredible. Awesome player. Brings a lot of fire to the game and drags everyone with him into the fight. So that\u2019s a huge addition back to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps that fire rubbed off.<\/p>\n It was at 6:00 into the third period that goalie Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a> raced across the ice to join a scrum that already featured Sharks goalie Alex Nedeljkovic<\/a>, the two earning penalties for leaving the crease and fighting majors, the latter the first of Bobrovsky\u2019s 16-season NHL career.<\/p>\n Bobrovsky later earned one of the biggest ovations — non-Stanley Cup edition — the Panthers have heard, as he returned to the ice to finish the game.<\/p>\n So, yes, perhaps Tkachuk\u2019s return impacted them all.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought he was pretty good,\u201d coach Paul Maurice said. \u201cHis hand skills are just \u2013 he knocked some things down. \u2026 Played him a lot in the back half of that game. So yeah, we need him completing some of those plays that he made. We just couldn\u2019t do much with it around it.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the forward, he got as much out of the game as he had wanted to, with the exception of two points.<\/p>\n He had waited until he was 100 percent, something that wasn\u2019t possible the last time he returned after a lengthy injury absence. That was for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round last season, on April 22, having been out since the Feb. 20 final of the 4 Nations Face-Off. He wasn\u2019t going to come back early again.<\/p>\n But he wouldn\u2019t be fully sure of himself until he took his first hit. That happened early and often, including a wallop by Desharnais at 17:22 of the first period.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a couple, a couple scrums early, a couple hits,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cIt\u2019s what you need. You almost need that as like a last check it off that you\u2019re good to go. I said it and I guess I had it coming.\u201d<\/p>\n It had been almost a year since he had felt this healthy, back before the 4 Nations Face-Off.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not worried about him,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cWe\u2019re not. He\u2019s gotten to a point that anything that happens going forward is going to be based on whatever happens going forward. He\u2019s not carrying this injury into the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is good. Because they\u2019ll need him.<\/p>\n There is a long road ahead for the defending champions if they want a chance to defend once again.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is our challenge that we\u2019re dealing with and we\u2019re going to deal with it straight through to the rest of the year,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cGuys that come in will have to make an impact right away because we\u2019re going to be chasing this thing right to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Panthers (53 points) sit four points out of the second wild card from the Eastern Conference, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-424968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}