2021 was a pivotal year for the Florida Panthers franchise. Here are five ways how
For the Florida Panthers, 2021 was the year they became a respectable franchise, building a foothold of interest in their community and becoming a team the rest of the league had to take seriously.
Now they hope 2022 will be the year they capitalize on all their promise.
In 2021, the Panthers made it to the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2016, then came back and proved it was no fluke when a new season began. For the first few months of the 2021-22 NHL season, Florida (20-7-4) has again been one of the best teams in the league and will try to keep rolling into 2022 when they ring in the new year at 1 p.m. on Saturday against the Montreal Canadiens (7-22-4) in Sunrise.
If this group of Panthers can eventually win a Stanley Cup, they will look back on 2021 as the year the franchise changed for the better. Here are five reasons:
1. They built one of the deepest rosters in the league. Most of the work actually took place in 2020, but general manager Bill Zito put the final touches on his roster throughout 2021 and saw the fruits of his labor rewarded when the Panthers put together their best regular season ever last year.
Florida finished the 2020-21 NHL season with 79 points, good for second place in the Central Division and the best points percentage in franchise history.
It started with a slew of savvy moves in 2020 — a trade for right wing Patric Hornqvist, the low-cost signings of wingers Anthony Duclair and Carter Verhaeghe, the pick-up of defenseman Radko Gudas — and continued during the earliest days of 2021. Just five days before the 2020-21 season began in January, the Panthers claimed Gustav Forsling off waivers, and the scrap-heap pick-up has turned into one of their best defensemen.
Ahead of the trade deadline, Zito landed defenseman Brandon Montour from the Buffalo Sabres and forward Sam Bennett from the Calgary Flames, and both are still major contributors, locked up through at least the 2023-24 season. Bennett, who was a former top-five pick and mostly given up on by the Flames, is now playing the best hockey of his career.
In the offseason, Florida also added forwards Sam Reinhart and Joe Thornton, re-signed Duclair and Forsling, and extended Verhaeghe. The Panthers believe they have 25-plus legitimate NHL players and 16 are under contract through at least next year. They’re set up for success for years to come.
2. They got a taste of the Stanley Cup playoffs — and a measuring stick. It was a long time coming for Florida to meet the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Cup playoffs. The Panthers learned just how far they are from really contending for a Stanley Cup, but also how close they actually might be.
Florida took the Lightning to six games in the first round of the playoffs before falling when goaltenders Sergei Bobrovsky and Chris Driedger unraveled, and star defenseman Aaron Ekblad’s injury became too much for its defense to overcome.
It was exactly what the Panthers needed, though.
“They’ve made us better,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said Thursday. “They are what we are aspiring to be.”
Right now, Tampa Bay is the gold standard as the winner of the last two Cups. Including preseason and postseason games, Florida played the Lightning 20 times in 2021 and no one has consistently played Tampa Bay tougher than the Panthers.
3. They locked up Aleksander Barkov for a long time. Maybe this one should’ve gone first and not just because Barkov has already established himself as the best player in franchise history. The star center’s October decision to sign an eight-year, $80 million extension to stay in South Florida until 2030 represents a seismic shift for the franchise: The Panthers are finally an appealing place to play for the best players in the league.
Barkov will only make it more appealing. He’s perhaps the best two-way forward in the league, the winner of the Frank J. Selke Trophy last season, and a player who makes everyone else around him better. As long as it has him, Florida has a player who can be the best skater on a championship team. Who wouldn’t want to come play with him?
4. Their coach resigned in scandal and it mostly hasn’t affected them. No, the Panthers haven’t kept up the pace they set at the start of the year when they opened the season with seven straight wins before Joel Quenneville resigned in October because of his involvement in the Chicago Blackhawks’ 2010 sexual abuse case, but it was an impossible ask. What Brunette has done is keep Florida on a championship trajectory.
The Panthers got their season-opening winning streak up to eight games, opened the year with 10 wins in 11 games and didn’t lose at FLA Live Arena until two days after Thanksgiving. At the end of November, Florida still had the best record in the league despite Brunette being unexpectedly thrust into his first head coaching job in the middle of the season.
Now the Panthers are still a clear Cup contender and, when fully healthy, they still have a case as the best team in the league. After losing four of five with Barkov sidelined before COVID-19 forced the season to pause last week, Florida has gotten back to full strength and finished 2021 with back-to-back wins against the New York Rangers and Lightning.
While Brunette still has an interim tag, the 48-year-old might just be Florida’s long-term answer behind the bench and a worthy successor to Quenneville.
5. They elevated expectations. On the day the Panthers’ 2020-21 season ended in Tampa, Quenneville said the loss was “disappointing to a different level.”
After years of frustrating seasons, this one was joyous — until the very end. Florida truly believed it could win a title and still bowed out in the first round of the playoffs.
In the end, the season was still a massive positive. The Panthers had 10 new players in their lineup, nearly every one younger than 30, and played the eventual champion tougher than anyone.
In 2022, expectations will be different. A fun regular season won’t mean anything if Florida can’t parlay it into postseason success.
“Anything less is a disappointment,” Barkov said in May, “for sure.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2021 at 3:59 PM.
