Panthers’ top guns keep struggling against Edmonton Oilers’ defense

EDMONTON, Alberta — Aleksander Barkov had a game worthy talking about in Game 6. He didn’t just help limit Edmonton star Connor McDavid to no points. He scored the lone goal on a move people would still be watching if the Florida Panthers won, drew an Edmonton penalty on another goal-scoring chance and had a goal called back by video replay that ruled teammate Sam Reinhart offside.

It’s what happened around him in the Panthers’ 5-1 loss to even the series that was their continuing trouble. Go down the recent play of the Panthers’ scoring stars:

— Reinhart, the team’s top producer with 57 regular-season goals, has one goal in his past eight playoff games. He had nine goals in his first 15 playoff games;

— Carter Verhaeghe has scored once in his past eight playoff games and is a minus-11 in the past four games against Edmonton;

— Matthew Tkachuk scored his first goal in 10 games in Game 5, but couldn’t build on that as he had just one shot in Game 6.

Throw in center Sam Bennett scoring once in the six games so far of this series, and you understand the very players that led the Panthers offense through these playoffs are being held in control by Edmonton thus far.

The struggles stretch to the power play, too. It has fizzled to one goal in 19 opportunities against Edmonton. Oliver-Ekman Larsson replaced Brandon Montour on the top defensive pairing for the power play, and his offensive component was seen with two first-period shots. That also was the Panthers’ team total of shots for the period.

“I think we’re lacking a little bit of offensive speed,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “And that would be true of our five-on-five game. We’re getting jammed into corners. So, we’ll look at places that we can generate speed or keep our speed.”

The Panthers have averaged 3.09 goals in the playoffs. That’s good for fourth best in the league. But the offensive problems line up with the problems this series. The Panthers scored 11 goals the first three games, all wins. They’ve scored five goals over the past three games, all losses.

“We know we have to be better,” Barkov said. “We had good moments in the game. We have to take those to the next game and, obviously, make the bad moments better.”

The problem wasn’t nerves, Barkov said. “Mentally, I’d say we were ready. But there were things that happened in the game that we’ve got to do a better job with.”

One of the bad moments has come early in the three consecutive losses to Edmonton. The Oilers have scored first each game. The Panthers, meanwhile, didn’t have a forward take a shot on goal in Game 6 until Barkov did nearly 32 minutes in.

“They came out hungrier than us,” Verhaeghe said. “They wanted it.  That was kind of it. We didn’t really get to our forecheck at the start and they took it to us. It’s up to us to get better.”

None of that will matter if Game 7 is different.

“I think we’re pretty positive,” Verhaeghe said. “We’re going home to play Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. Anytime you do that, everyone’s going to be jacked up and excited. You dream about it a little kids so it’s going to be fun.”

Florida Panthers Game 6 watch party at Amerant Bank Arena | PHOTOS