The Florida Panthers needed a win somewhat badly when they rolled into Quebec last night. Having lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs the night prior, the lowly Montreal Canadiens should have been a perfect opportunity for a bounce-back game. It didn’t turn out that way, as the Habs offered them a very tough second half of their back-to-back, handing them a 5-3 loss in what turned into a very physical affair at the Bell Centre.
Luckily for Montreal, Juraj Slafkovsky not only seemed ready for a physical contest, he relished it.
Bottled up by two Panthers on this play, Slafkovsky willfully accepts a hit to get the puck to his linemate with a zone-entry pass. Cole Caufield does some great work from there, but it doesn’t happen without Slafkovsky’s quick hands under pressure, nor his willingness to accept contact. This is some excellent transitional hockey, in which he’s using his frame in a way he wasn’t during his rookie season.
Last year, he was getting blasted with dangerous hits pretty regularly in these situations, partly due to having his head down too often. Now, he has his head on a swivel, so he sees incoming contact and almost seems to invite it. He’s baiting players into hitting him, and making plays off contact that he knows he has the ability to absorb. It’s a new and exciting wrinkle in his game.
And he also just so happens to be out looking for contact more often, leading to some incredibly fun moments like this:
At some point in the first quarter of this season, Slafkovsky woke up and realized not only that he’s 6’4″ and 240 pounds, but that it makes him bigger than most NHL players. He started playing like it, and he only seems to have grown more comfortable in using his physicality as the season has gone on.
Just imagine that game against the Panthers was a playoff game – many of those tend to play out a lot like what we saw on Tuesday night. Slafkovsky’s performance was that of a player you just loathe to be out on the ice against. That kind of presence will be immeasurably valuable to this team when they get back to competing for a playoff spot, and even more so when they’re actually there.
And if he takes another step forward next season, who knows, it might not be that long before he gets a chance to show what playoff Slaf looks like.
Click the play button below to listen to your full Bottom Six Minutes, also available wherever you typically get your podcasts. We’ll be back tomorrow night following the Tampa Bay Lightning’s visit to the Bell Centre.
