Florida Panthers' Aaron Ekblad Loses His Cool and Insults Fan
Florida Panthers star defenseman Aaron Ekblad went off on a fan last night as the Panthers lost 3-1 to the Chicago Blackhawks.
The defending Stanley Cup champions are suddenly cold as they dropped their fourth game out of their last five last night to the Blackhawks.
Prior to the cold streak, the team was 12-3-1 putting them on pace for 128 points. Suddenly, the team looks a lot more vulnerable.
It seems that frustration is growing with the team as Aaron Ekblad apparently got into a shouting match with a fan in the crowd at United Center last night.
According to first-hand reports, the Panthers defenseman called a fan in the crowd a, "fat f***." Needless to say, this is not becoming of an NHL player.
As one might expect, Ekblad got a lot of blowback from fans when this came out. One called him a bum while several simply pointed out that his team just lost to the Blackhawks, one of the worst teams in the league.
That being said, the Panthers did heavily outplay Chicago and likely deserved a better fate. They outshot them 33-19 and all the advanced stats pointed in their favor.
If they replayed the game again, Florida likely would have come on top. However, that is not how the league works and at the end of the day, only real goals count, not expected goals or any other metric.
As such, Blackhawks fans have earned the right to chirp the defending Stanley Cup champs. If anything, Ekblad should be happy there were not more fans piling on him.
Ekblad has not been much help to the Panthers on this cold stretch either. In fact, through 20 games he has just 8 assists and 0 goals.
He is scoring at a better rate than he did last year, but that is not saying much as he had just 14 points in the 2023-24 campaign.
Hopefully, Ekblad will go on a heater to help lead his team out of this slump soon. Their next opportunity to pick up points will come tomorrow against a mediocre but hot Avalanche team so they will need his best efforts to pull that one out.
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Zachary Werenski | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Sean Monahan | 1 | 3 | 4 | |
| Jesper Bratt | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Frederick Gaudreau | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Jack Hughes | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Nikita Kucherov | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Mackenzie Weegar | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Kent Johnson | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Alexander Wennberg | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Mitchell Chaffee | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Anthony Cirelli | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Matthew Coronato | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Marcus Foligno | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Nick Foligno | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Conor Geekie | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Brandon Hagel | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Stefan Noesen | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Corey Perry | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Igor Sharangovich | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Dmitry Voronkov | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Jets | 19 | 16 | 3 | - | 32 | |
Wild | 19 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 29 | |
Hurricanes | 19 | 14 | 5 | - | 28 | |
Devils | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
Capitals | 19 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 27 | |
Golden Knights | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Maple Leafs | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Rangers | 18 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 25 | |
Panthers | 20 | 12 | 7 | 1 | 25 | |
Flames | 20 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 25 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||