With losing record and dwindling playoff odds, Panthers badly need turnaround at Christmas
On the day the Florida Panthers introduced Matthew Tkachuk as their newest high-profile player back in July, the All-Star right wing wanted to talk about the loftiest goals imaginable. He envisioned the Panthers as a Stanley Cup contender and a perennial powerhouse for years to come, and why wouldn’t he? They won the Presidents’ Trophy last year, had a core of star players in their mid-20s and, by virtue of trading away yet another first-round pick to get Tkachuk, proved they’d do essentially whatever it would take to compete for a championship.
On the final day before the Christmas break, Tkachuk was reduced to talking about smaller goals after Florida’s 5-1, blowout loss Friday at the hands of the New York Islanders.
“If we play the way we can,” the 25-year-old winger said, “I know we can make playoffs.”
With close to half the season done, it’s the startling reality Florida faces.
Not even eight months removed from finishing the regular season with the best record in the NHL and then putting together their deepest run in the Stanley Cup playoffs since 1996, the Panthers sit seven points out of postseason position, with a negative-6 goal differential and an offense neutered, down to 3.23 goals per game this season from 4.11 — the most in more than 25 years — last regular season.
Even though it was fair to assume Florida would take a step back to reset this season due to cap constraints and a coaching change, this situation is more extreme than anyone expected. The Panthers still planned to be one of the best teams in the league, with a better than 90 percent chance to make the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs in the preseason, according to The Athletic’s prediction model. Now, their chances are down near 60 percent and FiveThirtyEight is even more pessimistic, placing Florida’s chances to make the Cup playoffs at just 25 percent.
A year ago, this Panthers opened the season with eight straight wins for the fourth longest season-opening winning streak in history, set a franchise record with a 13-game winning streak later in the 2021-22 NHL season, led the league with 29 come-from-behind wins and set an NHL record by completing six three-goal comebacks in a single season, including the playoffs.
This year, Florida opened the season with back-to-back wins and hasn’t had a single longer winning streak, and has pulled off only two come-from-behinds without a single multi-goal comeback.
The Panthers are a shell of their old selves.
“There are big chunks of our game I love. There are pieces that are right on and getting better,” first-year coach Paul Maurice said Thursday. “What we don’t need is more, but that’s not what you’re fighting. It’s the basics.”
At the time, there were two ways to consider everything Bill Zito did in the offseason: Either the general manager was bold or he was risky.
By trading All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar to the Calgary Flames for Tkachuk, Zito was trying to extend Florida’s window of contention and put together more of a playoff-ready roster, but risking that the removal of two franchise staples could drastically change the complexion of the team. By letting former interim coach Andrew Brunette walk after he was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award and replacing him with Maurice, Zito was trusting a more seasoned coach would better manage a win-now roster after Brunette mishandled large parts of the Panthers’ too-short run in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, but risking that a total stylistic overhaul, led by a 55-year-old coach with limited postseason success, would leave Florida worse off.
Whether reversing those decisions would’ve meant everything would’ve been OK doesn’t matter right now. The results speak for themselves. Through 35 games, the Panthers’ moves have not paid off.
It doesn’t mean they won’t eventually, though, and there are legitimate excuses to be had. Florida’s injuries, at this point, are astonishing — star center Aleksander Barkov is out right now with a lower-leg injury and missed six games with pneumonia, star defenseman Aaron Ekblad spent time on long-term injured reserve and is now day to day after sustaining an upper-body injury Friday against the Islanders in New York, right wing Anthony Duclair has yet to play this season after offseason surgery to repair his left Achilles tendon and goaltender Spencer Knight, defenseman Radko Gudas and forwards Colin White, Anton Lundell, Carter Verhaeghe and Patric Hornqvist have all missed time in the last month — and a return to something like full health will help.
The problem is the Panthers didn’t even look great before all the injuries and now there’s a ton of ground to make up.
“We have all the pieces in here,” Tkachuk said. “It’s just about—I know I’ve said it a million times, but—finding a way. We have the group to rattle off a bunch in a row. We haven’t done that at all this year. Unfortunately, we’ve put ourselves in a position where we have to do that to get back in this race.”
