‘Disappointing to a different level’: Why this Panthers exit is different (in a good way)
The Florida Panthers’ season had hardly been over 10 minutes and Jonathan Huberdeau was already in his suit, ready to get out of Tampa and back to South Florida after a uniquely disappointing ending.
Every one of his nine seasons with the Panthers has ended similarly. In six, Florida didn’t make the playoffs at all. In the other three, the Panthers were done before the end of the opening of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Florida’s latest early exit — a 4-2 series loss at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs — actually qualifies as a relative success compared to most of the organization’s history and especially compared to its exit from the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs a year ago.
The four-game loss in the qualifying round of the expanded Cup playoffs was the sort of ending that prompted soul-searching and brutally honest exit meetings, the firing of a longtime general manager and a massive roster overhaul.
The result of it all was still another first-round exit, but, for the Panthers, it could still qualify as one of the best seasons in franchise history.
“I was very disappointed [with] last year’s ending,” Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said Wednesday. “This is disappointing to a different level.”
Unlike last season and most every season in the organization’s history, Florida ended the 2020-21 NHL season feeling like it was a missed opportunity. The Panthers were a real Stanley Cup contender after finishing second in the loaded Central Division and finishing with the fourth-most points in the league. They were the higher seed than the defending-champion Lightning and mostly outplayed their in-state rival throughout all six games in the first-round series.
While early endings to most of Florida’s seasons felt inevitable, this team had real reasons to believe it could make a deep run in the and maybe even seriously contend for a Cup for the first time since it reached the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals in its third season of existence.
Instead, they still haven’t won a playoff series since 1996.
“It was a great season by us. We were having a lot of fun,” star center Aleksander Barkov said Wednesday. “We enjoyed playing with each other, but right now it’s just tough to say anything. I don’t know what to say. I’m disappointed.”
The regular season was probably the best in Panthers history. They set a franchise record for points percentage and, despite the shortened season, tied the franchise record for goal differential. Barkov, Quenneville and general manager Bill Zito could all be finalists for NHL awards in the coming weeks for their roles in transforming Florida from an afterthought into one of the best teams in the league.
Quenneville said he “absolutely” feels the Panthers are in a much better place right now than when the 2019-20 NHL season ended with a loss in the qualifying round of the expanded Cup playoffs.
“It was one of those years where expectations were probably not high. Internally, I think they grew over the course of the season and I think that’s a healthy thing,” Quenneville said. “You can’t be satisfied with the improvement that we did have, which, this year, was significant. Let’s keep thinking that this is the rate we want to get better at.”
There are a few significant questions Florida will face in the offseason. Forward Alex Wennberg, who spent most of the season as the second-line center, is an unrestricted free agent and top-line winger Anthony Duclair and versatile forward Sam Bennett, who took over as the second-line center after a trade-deadline acquisition, are both restricted free agents. The Panthers, according to CapFriendly, are projected to have almost $10 million in cap space to resign them and further upgrade the roster, though. Florida also has to figure out what to do with defenseman Keith Yandle, who’s on track to set the NHL record for consecutive games next year, but was a healthy scratch for 3 of 6 playoff games.
Goaltender Chris Driedger, who finished the regular season tied for fourth in save percentage, is likely to walk and find somewhere he can compete to be a full-time starter, but the Panthers are still deep at goaltender with Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight.
The latter was the revelation of the postseason. As a 20-year-old rookie, Knight significantly outplayed both Bobrovsky and Driedger in the postseason, and will share the net with Bobrovsky, who’s heading into the third year of a massive seven-year, $70-million contract. Down the road, Zito will have a major decision to make at goalie, but he can hold off for now with Knight on an entry-level contract and still inexperienced enough to justify keeping a veteran around.
The future has seldom been brighter in Florida, even if the ending felt familiar.
“In two weeks, we’re probably going to look back and think about these things. We had a good team this year. We were a lot more depth than we usually did and obviously we don’t know what’s going to happen this year,” Huberdeau said Wednesday. “We have a lot of guys that need to resign and stuff. I like our group. I like the chemistry in the room, on the ice.
“We’re optimistic for the next year, for sure.”
