Panthers center Stephen Weiss is back for another season of his blog, 'Nine. Weiss will bring you closer to Panthers action both on and off the ice as he talks about his experiences throughtout the 2008-09 season. Nine is in it's second season and can only exclusively be seen on floridapanthers.com

The popular first-round draft pick (4th overall) in 2001, is in his seventhh NHL season, all with the Cats. The Toronto, Ontario native had his second straight 40 point season, finishing with 13 goals and 29 assists in 74 games. He also set a career high in game-winning goals with four.

Nine Archive

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Heard they’re going to make a remake of the movie ‘Slap Shot.’ I’ll check it out and see what it’s like. It will be tough to get it as good as the first one. That’s a classic. The first hockey movie I ever watched. They had it pretty good, had it pretty bang on. ‘Mystery, Alaska,’ is up there.

We’re playing most of the top teams now, the teams we’re battling against, and it’s the most important time of the season. We need all the points, all the wins we can get. We’ll have our work cut out for us the next 30 games.

Our game in Washington was disappointing. You certainly want to score on the power play. Anytime you have a chance late against that team you want to capitalize. I don’t know, sometimes you go through you’re plays, try things you work on in practice, and it doesn’t work out. We had a good chance on the side of the net and it just jumped over Stiller’s stick. If he puts it in it’s a different story. But they did a good job of collapsing and blocking shots, getting their sticks in there and bouncing pucks.

We have Toronto tonight. You’re never sure what you’re going to get from a team on a certain night, but they’re a team below us, they’re desperate for wins, and they have a young team with nothing to lose. They have a lot of speed and energy. We’re going to have to be ready. They took it to us early the last time we played them so we’ll have to be ready from the start. We beat them both times in their building, too, so they’re going to want to come and do the same to us.

Any team you play, and teams are so close, it’s a battle every night. But in the standings this game is just as important a game as the one in Washington. We need these two points.

Talk to you soon.