I thought Barkov was very good in games 4 and 5, and pretty good tonight. I get where the criticism of him and Huberdeau comes from, given that this Panthers core had previously been terrible in the playoffs and they appeared to struggle at times in this series.
But Barkov was being shadowed, clutched, grabbed, and pounded every time he was on the ice, and was still effective. Huberdeau I thought wasn't great tonight with a lot of errant passes, but the effort was clearly there.
Mostly, I think the 'disappointment' in this series has been the atrocious special teams. 70% penalty kill and 0% power play. That's terrible, and I'm sorry, but that's a COACHING ISSUE. This team has the talent to have good special teams play, but coaching is totally failing where that's concerned. Huberdeau and Barkov would have much sexier stat sheets if they weren't 0 for 18 on the man advantage.
And I will give the coaches credit: Scratching Duclair for Lomberg was clearly the right move, and it paid off bigtime tonight. Pairing Weegar up with Forsling significantly reduced the number of 'Oh, God' moments we saw in the last couple of games and allowed Weegar to excel with Forsling there to babysit the brain farts.
But the special teams need to be fixed, and REAL SOON. Tampa and Toronto are even better in that area. Again, I ask: Carter Verhaeghe has been an unstoppable force of nature in the last three games, why not try him on the first power play unit?
