After a record-setting regular season, Panthers try to rewrite their playoff history
The Florida Panthers put together the best season in the NHL, easily the franchise’s best season ever and one of the best seasons in the history of the league.
Their reward is a first-round meeting with the Washington Capitals, who won the Stanley Cup just four years ago and still have much of the core intact from their championship team. The series starts Tuesday.
It’s not all too dissimilar from last year, when the Panthers put together the best regular season in franchise history, then drew the defending-champion Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs and got eliminated in six games.
The difference is Florida now has some experience of its own.
“We learned how hard it is and what it takes,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said Sunday. “We watched firsthand how Tampa handled themselves and what it took to beat us.”
The 2021 Cup playoffs were a reminder of just how fickle the Stanley Cup playoffs can be. The Panthers had home-ice advantage in the first round and still their season was done less than two weeks after they put together their — at the time — best regular season ever.
Florida knows the same thing could happen in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, but the organization — from management all the way down to the players — have been able to spend the last year trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Nobody wants to go home in two weeks,” defenseman Radko Gudas said Sunday. “The bitterness, the sourness that we had last year — I think a lot of guys remember that and you could feel it today in practice.”
The Panthers have improved in most statistical categories, averaging 0.75 more goals per game than they did last year and improving their power play by 3.9 percent, aided by the additions of forwards Sam Reinhart and Claude Giroux
Even their penalty kill ranks a few spots higher in the league rankings and they’re dominating possession time at an even greater level, which helps mask any defensive deficiencies.
Their shot distribution is more well-rounded, too, with more a higher percentage coming off tips and fewer coming from the point.
The biggest lesson Florida took from the Lightning last year is how good Tampa Bay was at winning any style of game. The Panthers feel they can do the same this year.
“However the game goes, they manage to know how to win it,” star center Aleksander Barkov said Sunday. “That was a good learning point for us, to manage those things to learn how to win the games.”
Huberdeau returns, Ekblad is questionable
Florida is optimistic it’ll have its full-strength lineup available for Game 1 on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise.
Wingers Jonathan Huberdeau, Mason Marchment and Carter Verhaeghe were all full participants in practice Monday at the Florida Panthers IceDen after either sitting out or being limited in practice Monday.
Star defenseman Aaron Ekblad also practiced for the second straight day in Coral Springs and is “probably ready to go” for the first game of the playoffs, Brunette said.
Ekblad and Marchment still need to be cleared by the team’s medical staff, Brunette said.
“We’ll have to see here after they got off the ice,” he said.
Ekblad missed the final six weeks of the regular season when a right knee injury cut short a James Norris Memorial Trophy-caliber campaign. The 26-year-old Canadian finished the regular season with 15 goals and 42 assists in 61 games, which still was good enough to rank fifth among all NHL defensemen in goals, ninth in points and fifth in points per game.
If Ekblad isn’t cleared in time for Game 1, Brunette said he should be back “by the end of the week.”
“He just has to get cleared,” Brunette said, “and then obviously we’ve got to check, and make sure how he reacts after practice today and if everything’s a-go.”
Panthers go with Sergei Bobrovsky
Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky will start Game 1 for Florida and the Panthers hope he’ll be able to start every game for the entirety of the playoffs.
The 33-year-old Russian led the league with 39 wins this season, and posted his best save percentage and goals against average since arriving in South Florida ahead of the 2019-20 NHL season.
The Panthers, however, wound up benching Bobrovsky in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs after he gave up 10 goals on just 63 shots in three games. Fellow goaltender Spencer Knight, then only 20, started the final two games of Florida’s brief playoff run and followed it up with a solid rookie season, even earning NHL Rookie of the Month honors for April on Saturday.
Florida wants to put to rest any goalie controversy, though. Bobrovsky — who won two Vezina Trophies with the Columbus Blue Jackets and signed a seven-year, $70 million contract with the Panthers in 2019 — will be the starter and Knight his clear-cut backup.
“Bob’s our guy is the thought process,” Brunette said. “We’re taking it day by day and expecting it to be Bob.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2022 at 3:08 PM.
