"Right now, every game for us is a playoff game," Panthers center Aleksander Barkov said after Monday's practice in St. Louis. "We need to win every game. We can't have any bad periods anymore. We just need to play consistent, 60-minute games and play good hockey for a whole a game. We know if we play the right way, we can play against any team in this league and win against anybody."
The Panthers (17-18-6) embarked on their current four-game road trip riding a season-long five-game winning streak. Through the first three stops of their trek, they've gone 0-2-1, earning their only point in a 3-2 shootout loss in Columbus on Sunday night.
"It was a good point," Panthers coach Bob Boughner said after the loss. "It was a hard-fought point against a real good hockey club. Both teams had good goaltending. We've just got to take this, move on and try and get the next two."
With 44 shots and only two goals to show for it, the Panthers once gain lamented their inability to finish in the offensive zone against the Blue Jackets - a problem that has been plaguing the team for several weeks. In the past 12 games, Florida has scored more than two goals just three times, despite averaging 32 shots on goal in that span.
"When you shoot the puck, you have a chance to score a goal," Barkov said. "We just need to go more to the net. After we shoot the puck, we just need to find the second and third chances and put them in. But overall, we're getting chances, so we just need to work on the goal scoring."
The majority of Florida's goal scoring this season has come from the top of the lineup, with Jonathan Huberdeau (15 goals), Vincent Trocheck (15) and Barkov (13) providing 39 percent of the team's total offense. In search of secondary scoring to supplement the production of his stars, Boughner shuffled his lines once again during Monday's practice, mixing and matching the majority of the team's bottom-nine forwards looking for a spark.
In were Jamie McGinn and Radim Vrbata; out were Maxim Maim and Jared McCann.
"These last couple games we've thrown a lot of pucks to the net," Boughner said. "We've had a lot offense. Last night we had 73 shot attempts. Those are the analytic things we talk about in the room, amongst the guys and coaching staff. We know in order to score goals you have to put pucks to the net and you have to have traffic."
The Blues (26-16-3) enter tonight's game on the heels of back-to-back losses in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. In those contests, St. Louis allowed 10 total goals after surrendering just five in the three previous games before that.
Still, the Panthers should expect a tough night on offense, as the Blues own the league's fourth-ranked defense, allowing an average of just 2.56 goals per game, behind the one-two punch of Jake Allen and Carter Hutton in net. Hutton has earned the nod in four of the last five games, posting a 3-0-1 record with a 2.09 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage.
"We've got to get all kinds of pucks to the net and we have to have bodies there," Boughner said.
The Panthers handed St. Louis its first loss of the season in a 5-2 win on Oct. 12 at BB&T Center.
