The Panthers’ offense is historically good, but is their defense Stanley Cup quality?
When the Florida Panthers slogged out a 3-2 overtime win against the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday, no one was too disappointed with how long it took to finally put away a bad team inside the friendly confines of FLA Live Arena.
If it wasn’t for the goaltending heroics of John Gibson, the Panthers know they probably would have won by multiple goals and taken care of the Ducks in regulation. They fired 55 shots at the Anaheim goaltender — their most in a game all season. More importantly, they held the Ducks to only a small handful of really good scoring chances.
By now, Florida has no doubts it will score enough to potentially win a Stanley Cup in June. With nine games left in the regular season, the Panthers are much more concerned with putting together a championship-caliber defense and their three wins in the last week were some of their most encouraging yet.
“We’re building,” said interim coach Andrew Brunette, who has been in charge since former coach Joel Quenneville resigned in scandal in the first month of the season. “We’re really trying to focus on being on the right side of a lot of pucks, doing the right things all over the ice, but especially without the puck. We’re working on it. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was.”
Within the span of four days earlier this month, Florida (52-15-6) needed a pair of four-goal comebacks to beat the New Jersey Devils and Toronto Maple Leafs, and Brunette hit his boiling point. The coach called it “worrisome” and pointed to the too-frequent defensive lapses plaguing his Cup-contending team. The Panthers gave up 20 high-danger chances to the Maple Leafs in the overtime win, 15 goals in their first three games of April and 35 in a 10-game stretch. Across a full season, 3.5 goals allowed per game would be one of the 10 worst marks in the NHL.
Since it survived Toronto, Florida has given up just 21 high-danger chances — its seven allowed per game is nearly five better than its season average of 12.0 — and six goals to move back up to 12th in the league in goals allowed per game.
To get there, the Panthers have made a trade-off. Florida leads the NHL with 14.4 high-danger chances per game, playing an extremely aggressive offensive style, which encourages defensemen to pinch up closer to the net and try to contribute scoring chances. In the past three games, the Panthers, however, are averaging just 9.4 high-danger chances with their defensemen — who contribute 2.7 points per game — combining for just two assists, not counting empty-net situations.
“It’s just choosing the right spots, choosing the right time,” defenseman Radko Gudas said. “We addressed it.”
Friday will present another of Florida’s toughest remaining tests when hosts the Winnipeg Jets at 7 p.m. in Sunrise. The Jets (35-28-11) are still in postseason contention and, with star goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, they have the ability to test the Panthers’ patience.
The lesson from the last three games, which included a two-goal comeback against the Buffalo Sabres last Friday and a one-goal comeback against Anaheim, is Florida can win even while playing a simpler style.
“We know we’re going to get our opportunities, as gifted an offensive team as we are. It’s just not giving free ones to them and making it a lot harder on us,” Brunette said. “We’re coming to the realization — we talked about it after the last game — that when we do the right things, we get the puck a lot and when we have the puck a lot we’re as good as anybody.”
Does defense win Stanley Cups?
Ultimately, the Panthers want to strike a balance.
Their offense is their superpower: The are on pace to be the first team to score more than four goals per game since the 1995-96 NHL season and have the 16th-best offense in NHL history, relative to the league-wide average for goals per game.
Defense does, however, traditionally win championships: Teams which allow one goal fewer than league average but have a league-average offense are 2 1/2 times as likely to go deep in the Stanley Cup playoffs as a team with the opposite profile, like Florida, according to FiveThirthyEight.
The Panthers might be good enough offensively to buck history, but they’re also flipping their focus to defense when it’s most important. Since the 2005-06 NHL season, the winner in every round of the Cup playoffs, on average, was better on defense than offense.
“Our team’s so good, we can win any kind of way,” forward Carter Verhaeghe said. “We can play a skill game, we can play a tight-checking game, so just getting that experience before the playoffs definitely helps because in the playoffs, who knows what’s going to happen.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 2:23 PM.
