Sam Reinhart providing ‘freakishly good’ efforts in Panthers’ postseason run
SUNRISE — For the second time this postseason, there was Panther-on-Panther crime. During Game 4 against the Bruins, Florida captain Aleksander Barkov accidentally drilled the Panthers leading goal scorer in the face with the puck while trying to pass in front of Boston’s net.
Sam Reinhart left that game with his face bleeding, but that did not keep him off the ice for Game 5 at home. Why? Reinhart, with his lower lip still injured, explained after Florida’s Game 5 loss.
“(I) feel good,” Reinhart said. “I don’t think a lip has slowed anybody down.”
Reinhart was one of the few bright spots on Tuesday, scoring the Panthers’ only goal in their 2-1 loss that left Florida clinging to a 3-2 series lead.
Reinhart’s goal came just a few moments after coach Paul Maurice ripped into the team, facing a 1-0 deficit.
Reinhart said Maurice told them to “just up the intensity a little bit, quicker to support, want that puck a little bit more and see if we could turn our game around a little bit.”
Maurice, in a jovial post-game press conference, explained a bit more about his motivational tactics.
“I don’t remember the exact words of the message,” Maurice said. “I wasn’t mad at them. I understood what they were going through. I just thought they needed some profanity in their life, and I brought some.”
With or without Maurice’s profane pep talks, Reinhart has been one of Florida’s key contributors throughout this season. The 28-year-old Canadian increased his goal total from 31 to 57 this year and improved his point total from 67 to 94. Both were career highs. The goal total was the third-highest single-season mark in Panthers history (and most by anyone besides Pavel Bure). His point total tied with Bure for fourth-most in team history.
The Panthers’ leading scorer is tied for second on the team with five playoff goals and is fourth on the team with nine postseason points.
Reinhart had more chances to put away another goal on Tuesday, but he could not convert. Maurice said Reinhart played well, but just barely missed out on those opportunities.
“Just a wonderful blend of all the hard things that the game of hockey demands, and then just some incredible hand skills and really showed off both in traffic,” Maurice said. “Not a perimeter player. His hand skills were incredible. But he doesn’t cheat the game either, like defensively, so good. Not just for the win, but certainly for the win, you’d like one or two of those to go for him. . . . Sam Reinhart did some freakishly good things, like high-end stuff that didn’t quite go, so he won’t get recognized for it. But I think we see that a fair amount.”
Fittingly, the last chance of the game fell to the Panthers’ top goal scorer. With just a few seconds left on the clock, down by one, Reinhart got the puck in front of Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman, who had been stellar all game. Reinhart fired to the net, but the goalie won the battle and deflected the puck away, setting up Game 6 on Friday night in Boston.
“I mean, I think you could maybe look back, press pause, maybe think about it a little more,” Reinhart said, “but that’s the way it goes out there.”
