It's feast time for the Panthers. On the menu Penguins. As the Florida Panthers prepare to meat the 1rst round enemy Pittsburgh Penguins we decided to compare these two teams head to head.
Florida Panthers finished 3rd in the conference and league while Penguins were 6th. Eventho there high finishing position the Panthers GM wasnt happy with the Panthers play. "We need to be tougher, need our star players to give 110% everynight as it seemed like only Luongo has done that so far. We need more offense from the defense and our offense to click every night"
It's an serious leadership, experience could decide. Panthers have the edge in that section up front and back but Kolzig has been to the finals although Luongo is coming off an vezina candidate season.
Forwards
Marc Savard leads Penguins top players with 70 points in reg season with Alexei Kovalev and Miroslav Satan behind him. Penguins have an whopping 6 forwards with 20 or more goals. Panthers can respond with 8 players who have over 20 goals.
Edge: Even
Defense
Panthers are lead by Ed Jovanovski, Mathieu Schneider and they got an good supporting crew in underrated Steve Staios, youngster Brad Stuart, two way Cory Sarich and multitask man Josef Boumedienne. Panthers gave up the least amount of shots per game in the league while Penguins were ranked 12th. Penguins defense leaded by high scoring Kimmo Timonen is also very hard hitting with Jason Smith and Darius Kasparaitis. Panthers PK must keep Timonen on eye closely. His pin point passes can destroy any defense in the league
Edge: Panthers
Goalies
Experience vs Die Hard Attitude. Everyone knows how good Luongo is he can carry an team alone. Added with solid defense almost instoppable or will experience and Olaf Kolzig take this one home?
Edge: TBS
Special Teams
Panthers PP #10, PK #1
Penguins PP #7, PK #26
If Panthers get the PP going it could be the decider in this series. There PK has been the best in the league all season long
Edge: Panthers
Coaching
Jacques Martin vs John Muckler. Martin has never won the cup and Muckler has more expereince in playoffs. John Muckler has been fired by Panthers GM before in an league before OTHL. So there is some bad blood between these two.
Edge: Even