Inconsistency killing Panthers, who follow signature wins with blowout losses on road trip
Matthew Tkachuk paused for emphasis between every word.
“Every single night,” he said Saturday after the Florida Panthers ended their four-game road trip with an embarrassing 7-3 loss to the Nashville Predators in Tennessee.
It came as a moment in a longer answer. “We’ve put ourselves in a position where every single night we have to get points,” he said. “We have to get wins. We have to win way more than the majority of our games to get in.”
It is, of course, essentially an impossibility — with 23 games left, the Panthers are going to lose sometimes and even a 23-game point streak would be tied for the fourth longest in NHL history — and yet it explains the attitude they need in order to complete their second-half comeback and make the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Panthers (28-25-6) cannot play like they did against the Predators
“There’s no real time to settle in anymore,” left wing Ryan Lomberg said Saturday. “We need to go here.”
Florida dug an early hole in Nashville and couldn’t overcome it to win, although the Panthers did rally to take lead in the first period before ultimately blowing their early advantage, too.
Both are typical for Florida this season: The Panthers’ seven come-from-behind wins are tied for the fewest in the league and their 15 comeback losses are tied for the sixth most.
This loss — both because it consisted of a failed comeback and blown lead, and because it came at the end of a potentially season-saving road trip — was particularly galling.
On Thursday, Florida took down the Washington Capitals to move into a tie for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference and the Panthers would’ve — at least briefly — taken sole possession of a playoff spot with a win Saturday. Instead, Florida got blown out by another team fighting for its postseason life in the Western Conference to settle for a .500 road trip.
The two wins were both massive, each against a playoff contender. The two losses were both uninspiring, each by four goals.
“We’re not in the position where we can go .500 on a trip,” Lomberg said.
The Panthers’ loss to the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday was, in some ways, excusable. Florida was playing its second game in as many days and gutted out a shootout win against the Minnesota Wild the night before.
Their loss at Bridgestone Arena was because “we didn’t have the legs or the brains,” coach Paul Maurice said. Florida was down 4-2 by the end of the first period and never mounted any sort of comeback, only scoring again after the deficit grew to 6-2 in the third.
The Panthers, again, will lose sometimes in these final 20-plus games, but they want those to be hard-fought games that could go either way. Florida never had a chance to win this one.
“We’re in a position now where every game is pretty much a playoff game for us to get in,” Tkachuk said.
The one bit of good news for the Panthers is they’re still within a point of the No. 8 seed and their schedule now becomes favorable. They host the Anaheim Ducks on Monday at 1 p.m. at FLA Live Arena and then won’t leave Florida again for a month.
Starting with their game against the Ducks (17-33-6) on Presidents’ Day, the Panthers play nine of their next 10 games at home and the one road game only takes them a few hours away to face the Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa on Feb. 28.
In all, Florida plays 15 of its final 23 games in Sunrise.
“We’ve paid for it and now we’ve got to make the most of our opportunity,” Maurice said. “We’ve got a great opportunity to play in front of our fans, to get them excited. We’re going to need them, too.”
It’s a big part of why the Panthers are still favored to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs, according to FiveThirtyEight.
“It’ll be way nicer if we’re able to run the table at home,” Tkachuk said. “We’ve unfortunately put ourselves in a position where we have to do it now. There’s an expectation, obviously, in the room that we’re still making a push. We’re still right there.”
