Road to a Repeat! The Florida Panthers gave us a victorious performance against the Anaheim Ducks, 5-2! Sam Bennett makes his first goal in more than 20 games. We hear from Head Coach Paul Maurice as they continue their road trip in southern California with a game in LA vs the Kings.
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00:00Let's get to the road to repeat here on 560 WQAM which is sponsored by our friends over at Celsius.
00:08Hockey fans, don't sit this one out when it's game time. Make Celsius a part of your play and get
00:11that energy up. Game day is fueled by Celsius essential head drinks, the official energy drink
00:15of your Florida Panthers. Oh, take it easy, dude.
00:21Oh, you and I galaxy vibing it up today, dude. No, we are not.
00:24Oh, what do you got? Let me see. Oh, you got the cherry cola.
00:27I was looking for that this morning at 7-Eleven. I could not find it.
00:30They don't have that at 7-Eleven. What? They have everything at 7-Eleven.
00:34No, they don't. I don't like that.
00:36You got to get it online at Walmart. No, I've seen it. I've seen it. I've
00:40seen it at gas stations. I've seen it. At gas, certain gas stations. Yeah.
00:44I think I see that the, what is that, an Exxon down over there that I always go to then?
00:47Yeah, but it's not, it's not connected with 7-Eleven.
00:50No, it's not. But I feel like 7-Eleven usually has every flavor. I feel like that's kind of their hub.
00:55Cats win last night. They beat the Ducks 5-2, so they win the home-and-home.
01:01Who was in that? Bobrovsky. Bobrovsky yesterday.
01:04Okay, okay. I believe Spencer Knight will be in that tonight.
01:08They got a big one against the Kings. Are they trying to
01:15pace Bobrovsky a little bit now that they see that Knight is playing well?
01:21You know, they're saying publicly no, Leroy.
01:24But it looks like, it just seems like he's getting a lot more breaks. You know what I mean?
01:30Yeah. Well, they're obviously, they got this little sprint until we get to the,
01:33they'll get a week off for the Four Nations Cups, which Bob will not be in because Russia's not in
01:38it. So he'll get a little bit of a break there, but this just happens to be a road trip. Like
01:44Maurice said the other day that we're not going off of our original plans. It just happens to be
01:50a road trip that has two back-to-backs on it. And so it's going to line up with Bob playing
01:56the Ducks, Knight against the Kings, Bob against San Jose, and then Knight will play on Sunday
02:03night against Vegas. So I can't say, they're saying publicly, no, this isn't, but it does
02:11happen to be lining up with a situation where it's back-to-backs. They're not going to obviously play
02:16a 36-year-old back-to-back Knights. That doesn't happen a lot anyway. So they got, they are getting
02:22some time for a Knight and Knight's been on fire. So decisions made easier based on how well Knight's
02:28playing is what I'm saying. It's no big deal to do it. If he was struggling, then they would have
02:35to be a little more cautious with how they do it. But I think he would still do the second
02:44night of a back-to-back. Well, I'll tell you one thing, speaking of struggling and it was a huge
02:48one was yesterday, Sam Bennett scoring for the first time, I think in 20 plus games. So, you
02:53know, obviously that's gotta be weighing on him because he's got some money on he's trying to,
02:58he's trying to earn. And so yeah, dude. So question in hockey, because I know it's,
03:08it's kind of random, but not really right. Like you have your scores, but you have some guys who
03:15score a lot, but it's never really, Oh, I'm just going to, you know, except Reinhardt, except
03:22Reinhardt. So, so when it comes to that and it comes to, you know, playing for a new team or
03:30paying a guy, do you take that into consideration? Because scoring goals, there's only a handful of
03:37guys that are like, say Ant-Man, you're going to score 25 a game, right? You know, but there's a
03:46lot of guys around 20, 30 goals that, you know, things have to kind of go well for them to go
03:53more than that. Yeah. And I think that you also have to come to the realization, like any other
03:58championship team, eventually you're going to have to make decisions, right? And they've gotten,
04:03they've gotten to a point where they kept Rhino, they kept for Hagee,
04:07you know, obviously Barkley, obviously Barkley and Kachuk are your pillars, you know, those are
04:12your, those are your two guys. So it may be inevitable at one point, you're going to lose,
04:17you know, a key piece, just like they ended up losing Montour last year and some other
04:21fringe pieces. But I don't think that they've really had the leg cut out yet of like, Oh,
04:26they lost, they lost the Van Ginkle, right? Right. Uh, here's Paul Maurice yesterday. This
04:33is him speaking to the media after the wind over the ducks. Yeah. We give him a shorthand
04:38of goal to start the game, but I thought we handled that really well. I liked that,
04:42but the game took some strange turns in the second period. You get a five on three,
04:47you don't score became a puck game. We didn't like that. Like the way that we made it four to
04:52a four check. That was more like our game. And we, I think we had had 10 hits through the first
04:58two periods. That's not really like our, our game. Then I really liked our neutral zone defense
05:04in the third. So we were, we were hard up on the blue line and neutral zone transition. So
05:09winning is never easy winning on the road, especially with changing time zones a fair
05:14amount here recently. Uh, happy for that. And then probably the biggest thing is you
05:17get a couple of guys, Sam Bennett scores a goal. And that confidence starts to come back.
05:30I think he's just a great mentor right now for Mackie. Mackie's playing more Sam Bennett's game
05:36than Sam Bennett is. So he's got somebody to, you know, all three of those men will go get the puck
05:40and then they can be physical and he's got some hands. You can make some plays. I just like,
05:45I think there's a real good bond being created there. I don't know if I leave the lines
05:52straight through the year, but I won't change that right now. For sure.
06:01They just, sometimes they're, you know, they haven't played much together and
06:04they're all three very, very bright men, really high hockey IQ. They're finding each other and
06:10the support's good. And I think it's interesting for them. I think, you know,
06:15for each one of them to play with two other players that can match their skill level,
06:18I think they have fun with it. Yeah, that's good. Cause we haven't been scoring and no matter what
06:26the players want to score goals. So it makes you feel good. So everybody that gets a point
06:30tonight gets to leave the rink with a win and a point and they get a smile on their face.
06:33There you go. He hadn't said two one 50 in a while. No,
06:40no, but, uh, yeah. And then he's talking there, Maggie, Sam Miskevich, the young, uh, 22 year old,
06:45a couple of assists yesterday for him. And, uh, yeah, you do, you know, the Panthers do have a
06:50couple of these young up and comers, obviously Lindell's continue to develop and whatnot,
06:54but, uh, a nice one for them tonight. They take on the Kings who have been, uh,
06:59you know, that's going to be a much more formidable foe, uh, who also oddly enough
07:03that he, uh, the, the Panthers will take on pretty recently after this road trip. So
07:08I don't know what's the, the, the, the, uh, NHL doing the whole West coast, East coast,
07:13home and homes kind of an odd thing. Very, very strange, but a nice one for the cats.
07:19And yes, good for Bob, but also you want to keep it rocking for, uh, you want to keep it
07:24rocking for Spencer night tonight, who actually, who absolutely has been on fire national TV tonight
07:30for those, uh, looking forward, it is on TNT tonight, but you will get it here on five 60 WQM.
07:35If you want Doug Plaguen's and the home call tonight, because I know I, I, I do think it's
07:40one of these things I noticed Leroy. I feel like the, the hockey fan, they really, really miss
07:46when Goldie and Moeller are not on the call and they seem to be very annoyed by the national TV
07:52calls. So, you know, maybe you sync it up, you get your odyssey app out and you sync it up with,
07:57uh, with plugins on the, on the television. I, maybe that makes you happy. Get your Alexa out.
08:03We got the same thing. We got both of our teams, no local, uh, no tomorrow. Correct. Yeah.
08:09Tomorrow we got a heat on TNT as well.