Panthers tried to win now in 2020. It didn’t work and new GM has big problems to solve
This season began differently for the Florida Panthers: There were real expectations.
They hired a big-name coach and signed a big-name goaltender. Everything Dale Tallon did in the offseason was geared around finally turning the Panthers into a real contender, which made the latest flameout one of Florida’ most frustrating yet.
“It was a very disappointing ending,” coach Joel Quenneville said Friday after his team lost a 3-1 series to the New York Islanders in the qualifying round for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It has been less than a week since the Panthers’ season ended and already they have fired Tallon and lost the NHL Draft lottery.
Whomever Florida’s hire to succeed Tallon this offseason will have a long list of problems to solve after another early exit. Three stand out above the rest.
1. What to do with core?
Before the season, Aleksander Barkov’s peers agreed: The center was the most underrated player in the NHL.
Nearly 40 players were surveyed in the league’s annual preseason players poll and no player was mentioned more than Barkov when it came to the question of the NHL’s most overlooked. In the NHLPA’s player poll, Barkov’s peers even voted him the fifth best center in the entire league.
It seemed like a good time to hop on the Barkov bandwagon. He was an All-Star for the first time in 2018 and won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 2019. Florida had seemingly put a compelling supporting cast around him, too, and this season was poised to be a turning point for his tenure with the Panthers.
Instead, Barkov missed out on the 2020 NHL All-Star Game and Florida missed out on the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs. One of the lasting images of the Panthers’ season was Barkov missing an open net Friday as the Islanders knocked Florida out of the qualifying round with a 5-1 win at Scotiabank Arena.
“It would’ve been a huge goal for us,” Barkov said Friday. “Obviously looking back on that, that should’ve been a goal 10 times out of 10, but the defenseman made a really good play and I was just unlucky on that one.”
The 24-year-old Finn finished the regular season with 20 goals and 42 assists in 66 games, then added another goal and three assists in the Panthers’ quick four-game trip to the extended postseason. It was a good season, but the production didn’t match his budding reputation.
While the supporting cast and defense are still the source of most of Florida’s long-term questions, it’s time to put the Panthers’ once-promising young core under the microscope. Barkov, All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and defenseman Aaron Ekblad were all top-three picks from 2011-2014, and they’ve combined for just four All-Star appearances and one trip to the real postseason in 2016.
Four years after those three took Florda to the postseason as 23-and-under franchise cornerstones, they’re still talking about the need to just get experience playing in meaningful games.
“The only way is up. We got a good experience in this playoffs,” Barkov said. “Obviously, not the regular playoffs, but qualifications or whatever are still playoff games. If you lose, you’re out. If you win, you’re in. It was good to get those couple games for our organization and team.”
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2. Is Bobrovsky the long-term answer?
Tallon’s offseason plan last year had two primary focuses. The first was to bring winning experience into the organization, both by hiring Quenneville and by signing veterans with real postseason experience, like winger Brett Connolly from the Washington Capitals and center Noel Acciari from the Boston Bruins.
The second, and the splashier, was to give $70 million to Sergei Bobrovsky to hopefully fix Florida’s longstanding defensive issues.
Most of the first season of the two-time Vezina Trophy winner’s seven-year deal did not go well. The superstar goaltender had his worst season since his second in the league, giving up 3.23 goals per game with a meager .900 save percentage. Considering Florida also has the No. 1 goaltender prospect in ESPN’s rankings, it quickly seemed like a disastrous deal — the sort of deal a general manager makes when he feels the pressure to win now.
Tallon’s successor, at least at first, will have to work around it.
“We know the importance of goaltending is huge for us and, obviously, he had a lot of pressure on him with the signing of the deal and expectations are high,” Quenneville said. “I think he got comfortable over the stretch of the season.”
In the qualifying series, Bobrovsky showed enough to give Quenneville confidence his goalie can revert to form next season. Bobrovsky’s goals against average dropped to 3.07 and his save percentage climbed slightly to .901 even as the Panthers failed to outshoot New York in any of the four games.
There’s a history of high-profile goalie acquisitions struggling in their first year in their new city, then stabilizing in Year 2. If he doesn’t, Spencer Knight’s presence will put pressure on the entire organization.
“It’s kind of a mixed feeling,” Bobrovsky said of his season Friday. “In the beginning, it was very hard for me, but in the end I started to feel better and better. I adjusted more, got more comfortable with the living, with the rhythm and with the whole surrounding — with the guys, with the team, with the coaches and stuff. For this short period, I felt pretty good physically, mentally and I think we made some strides.”
3. Where’s the next generation?
In Tallon’s 10 years as general manager, he picked in the first round 12 times. Of those 12 picks, only four — including the three top-three picks —became All-Stars for Florida and only four — again, including those three top-three picks — suited up in the postseason for the Panthers this year.
Roster building and talent development was an issue for a decade and it forced Tallon to try to build a playoff team through free agency.
The cleanest path to Florida taking the next step is by getting its next batch of prospects to pan out. The Panthers have three top-50 prospects — their first round picks from the last three years — and they have the No. 12 pick in the upcoming 2020 NHL Entry Draft.
Florida hopes Knight, the No. 16 prospect, will be blocked by Bobrovsky for a while, but wingers Grigori Denisenko and Owen Tippett could be counted on next year. The Panthers signed Denisenko to an entry-level contract in July and Tippett even traveled with Florida to Ontario for the expanded postseason, although he never suited up for a real game.
“Anytime you get a chance like this it’s a great opportunity to just take it all in and learn from it,” Tippett said in July. “When you come up here, you just take the opportunity to be a sponge.”
