With a 5-day break, Panthers ‘reboot’ after rare losing streak with two big areas to fix
The worst week of the Florida Panthers’ dream season did not end with panic.
Instead, it was sort of the exact opposite.
“If we play like we did today, we’ll be fine,’’ interim coach Andrew Brunette said after the Panthers’ 4-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
Still, it was a third straight loss for Florida — all at FLA Live Arena — and sent the Panthers tumbling down the Eastern Conference standings. It was only their third three-game losing streak of the season and the other two came when they dropped four in a row on the road in the first month of the season when they were missing several players due to COVID-19 right before the season paused around Christmas.
Brunette saw enough positive signs during the weekend, and enough progress form losses Nos. 1 and 2 to loss No. 3. He also saw a perfectly timed break waiting — sort of like the one the Panthers had for the holidays, when they followed up a three-game skid by winning four in a row and eight of nine — with five days to prepare for Florida’s next game against the Ottawa Senators on Thursday at home.
“It’s good to reboot, and then we’ve got to get back right at that schedule here,” Brunette said. “We kind of have these reboot-kind-of breaks in our schedule I think every three weeks, so it’s good we get the cadence down with our practice.”
On Sunday, the Panthers (35-13-5) took the day off, and several players made the quick trip to Palm Beach Gardens to watch the final round of The Honda Classic at PGA National Resort and Spa. On Monday, they returned to practice at the Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs to try to fix what went wrong last week in Sunrise.
Panthers have reasons for optimism
Sometimes, a losing streak comes because of some sort of trend — a bad stretch of goaltending, a series of power-play failures, a breakdown of possession fundamentals — and a few have emerged during this losing streak. Not many have stretched through all three games of the skid, though.
In the last two games, Florida has barely generated any level of rebound chances, but it had six rebound attempts Tuesday against Nashville Predators. In the first two games, the Panthers went 1 of 7 on the power play, but they regrouped and went 2 of 5 on Saturday against the Oilers.
Florida blew leads in all three games despite exceeding season averages in every meaningful possession metric — Corsi percentage, Fenwick percentage, shots percentage, scoring chances percentage and high-danger chances percentage — and now trails the rival Tampa Bay Lightning in points percentage, even as it technically still sits in first place in the Atlantic Division with the help of its extra games played.
Brunette’s message, though, is to try to build on what went well Saturday, when the Panthers outshot Edmonton, 47-22, and had 45-25 advantage in scoring chances and a 75-38 advantage in shot attempts.
“That’s hockey. Pucks weren’t going in for us,” Brunette said. “We created enough opportunities and we did all the things we like to do. It’s part of hockey.”
It was a different chord than the one he struck after those first two losses to the Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets. Especially after the loss to the Blue Jackets, players and coach were critical of themselves for the way the Panthers played, singling out their deficient “energy levels,” as star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar put it.
On Saturday, Brunette said he “loved our game.”
“Games like tonight,” he said, “we might’ve got six or seven earlier in the year.”
Goaltending, shooting is costing Panthers
This is the most costly trend from the last week, at least on offense. Florida leads the league with 120 high-danger goals and it converts those high-danger chances into goals 16.3 percent of the time.
In each of the three losses, the Panthers have turned high-danger chances into goals less than 12 percent of the time. They’ve scored just six goals on 59 high-danger chances for a 10.2-percent conversion rate.
At the other end of the ice, Florida’s goaltending has been abysmal during the losing streak.
On Tuesday, goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky had his worst three-period performance of the season when he had a meager .844 save percentage. On Friday, goaltender Jonas Johansson made his Panthers debut and posted an even-worse .815 save percentage. Florida went back to Bobrovsky on Saturday and he was even worse than he was Tuesday, posting an .818 save percentage.
Those are three of the Panthers’ seven worst goaltending performances of the season in the last week, including three of their four worst since the calendar flipped to 2022.
Bobrovsky worked as the starting goaltender in practice Monday with Johansson as the backup and goaltender Spencer Knight, who started the year with Calder Memorial Trophy aspirations before falling into a clear backup role to Bobrovsky, still with AHL Charlotte after being sent to the minors Feb. 2.
Brunette said he doesn’t “think there’s anything wrong with” Bobrovsky, despite his downturn in play in the middle of his renaissance season.
“I don’t think he’s burned out,” Brunette said. “Unfortunately, we gave up a couple easy goals against him, so that’s more on us than him.”
