Follow @SpiegelSports Maybe the injured Jonathan Huberdeau was the lynchpin that kept the first line for the Florida Panthers humming.
Maybe Aleksander Barkov's early season slump is directly affecting everyone around him.
Or maybe Jaromir Jagr is just old.
To this point in the season we are not seeing the Jagr of last year.
He lead the team in points last season and was the leader on and off the ice that kept this team pushing forward to its most successful season in franchise history.
The league average for shooting percentage for individual players is 9 percent. Last season Jagr's shooting percentage was an astounding 18.9! His 27 goals and 39 assists were simply remarkable for a 43-year-old man.
Now seven months removed from such a successful campaign, it's hard to believe this is the same player. His shooting percentage is a dreadful 2.6 percent and he's only taken 38 shots through 17 games as the Cats' first line right wing.
While the Panthers have received remarkably good production from their bottom two lines, their 8-8-1 record is indicative of the sub-par performance of the top line. Jonathan Marchessault has been a nice surprise as Huberdeau's replacement, leading the team in points. But Barkov and Jagr have combined for three goals and eleven assists. That is simply unacceptable for two of the best players on the team.
Barkov brings an extraordinary two-way game that makes him much more valuable than basic statistics might show, but Jagr does not have the speed to consistently contribute in such ways. He definitely has the hands, and is as hard as ever to knock off the puck, but he is noticeably slower from last season.
To be fair, he has been dealing with a groin issue that may be slowing him up. Now at 44, we can only imagine the soreness and fatigue he experiences during and after games. With Father Time continuing to tick, it is fair to say these types of nagging injuries will only increase.
The Panthers rewarded Jagr with a well-deserved one year deal worth $4 million during the offseason, but one has to wonder if this is the beginning of the end of Jagr in Florida, and possibly the NHL.
Either way, Jagr has been such an important part of this team. He was arguably the "spark" this organization needed two years ago when it was looking to turn the corner of relevancy.
It's too early to presume the future. Perhaps something clicks and he and the first line regain their from from last year. But Jonathan Huberdeau is still at least three months away. If he is the reason for the struggle, perhaps head coach Gerard Gallant is going to have to be creative in mixing up the lines to get more offensive consistency.
A very interesting back to back awaits this weekend against Ottawa and New York. After making Carey Price look human Tuesday night in a 4-3 overtime win, Florida laid and egg against Toronto giving almost every one of their six goals to them on a silver platter.
Without a scoring top line it's almost impossible to win shootouts, and those are the types of games the Panthers need to avoid until they find the consistency they are looking for.
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