Barkov’s Florida is confused like a wall clock – much more is expected of the maestro itself

It was an ugly defeat – Alexander Barkovin skipped by the Florida Panthers lost Saturday night in Washington in a rude way. The readings were recorded as if they were tennis (6-1), even though the home team didn’t even hit anything special on the table. But this is the level of Florida that has won the regular season at the moment: it is losing 1-2 in the match series, surprisingly.

Looking more closely at Florida’s play in the ongoing series, talk of winning the Stanley Cup can be forgotten.

It’s genuinely confusing how a herd of panthers rolling on a regular ice hockey in the regular season has been able to drive themselves into nervous turmoil in a week. The game is messed up, individuals underperform and inexperienced coaching Andrew Brunetten under the leadership, too, has so far lost the bench battle.

The first theme could be the solutions made by coaching.

It’s inconceivable that in the regular season, the chains of the team that won the night with the same lineup will be beaten to a whole new faith in the first playoff game. Florida didn’t even have time to lose their first home game after Brunette had already beaten all the eggs in the same basket by lifting the star pier Jonathan Huberdeaun Alongside Barkov.

At the same time, all the other chains and the harmony that had prevailed in the team before were broken.

Barkov and Huberdeau arranged for Florida to win a second match, but the ensemble has not worked in the match series so far at all. The second and three-way chains are nowhere near the level they were in the regular season. The deep three-chain team was instantly turned into a one-chain team.

And it is not justified that new energy had to be brought to the team by changing the chains. If two weak batches require such a strong reaction from coaching, confidence is on a really thin footing. And on the other hand: why in the world have the chains not been rolled back to the old days, when after two matches it was clear that the whole thing was not working.

Partly for this reason, confident and youthful Florida has become timid and fearful.

Playfully, the difference to the regular season is overwhelming and it is an honor for Washington, who has experienced everything. It clogs downtown and takes the momentum out of the Florida game known as the flywheel. The Panthers themselves feed all of this by playing slowly, carelessly, and at times even softly.

It may well be that the inexperienced Florida forgot in the regular season to learn to play the game correctly. Beating the weaker with eight goals may not prepare you for a hard playoff game, where the margin between teams is often one goal. Washington has been playing this puck in the playoffs for over a dozen years.

Florida is clearly in some sort of shock with its game and most of all the problems at hand.

It puts an inexperienced coaching team, as well as many inexperienced players, to a relentless hard test. Leadership is now being asked, and the coaching solutions so far have at least not calmed the situation around the team. And there is no reason to whitewash the performances of the leading players either.

The series has now been played in nine rounds and in eight of these Aleksander Barkov has a balance of 0 + 0. Clearly, this is not enough for anything, even if other gaming is good. Barkov has even been talked about as the best in the world, so it says its extracts should also be evaluated. The same goes for Huberdeau.

The latter’s evening culminated in an unnecessary attack head frost on Saturday, during which Washington hit the match with a 4-1 hit in the final package.

It is also up to Barkov, Huberdeau and partners to make the game of superiority work. So far, the team has not scored any superior goals in the series. Here, too, there is a ticking time bomb in the hands that leads to an early summer holiday at worst. And the 66% underpower game hasn’t been any better.

Admittedly, even with superiority, the coaching team has shuffled the pack appropriately, playing five attackers at a time, four and one pack at a time – this is the atmosphere right now in Florida: nervous, insecure, and even panic-like. Let’s do it and get excited about it instead of having a clear plan in place. This also applies to the way the game is played and implemented.

One symptom is the bad start to the matches we have now seen in the three-match series of three. How can it be possible that a team that has lived through collective regularity through the regular season will not suddenly get the right emotional state out of itself in the playoffs?

There are three important things missing from making Florida: joy, passion, and intensity. The victory in the regular season put expectations in the clouds and when the series went on the wrong tracks from the start, the chains shuffled, the game disappeared and Washington got ahead, uncertainty and some fear of losing seemed to enter the picture.

So far, despite one win, the Florida match series has been a pretty downfall. The good thing is that Washington is not one of the toughest collectives in the Eastern Conference and, on the other hand, the Panthers are only losing 1-2. However, now is the last time to wake up both behind the bench and on the bench.

The chains must first be returned to regular season and then the team must gain a foothold and find a new level to play combat. If Washington continues to set the pace in matches, it will tune the biggest bomb in the current playoffs. Barkov must also step up his leadership – leadership must be demonstrated in every way, not least in the form of power.

The criticism is fierce, but that’s how it should be after the regular season. At the very least, Florida is finding an emotional level and fighting game in which it fought back a year in the first round against Tampa. We haven’t even gotten a taste of that level yet.

And it is a huge disappointment.