As a new season begins, Florida Panthers are ‘hungrier this year’ after Stanley Cup Final run
Matthew Tkachuk is done talking about last year.
Don’t get it wrong. The accomplishments and achievements he individually and the Florida Panthers as a whole made are not lost on him. It’s hard for Tkachuk not to be excited and think positively about a season in which he was the All-Star Game MVP, a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy (the NHL’s most valuable player award) and helped the Panthers make it to the Stanley Cup Final in his first season in South Florida despite Florida being the last team into the playoff field in the Eastern Conference.
“There’s some great memories,” Tkachuk said, “but it didn’t end the way we wanted it to.”
The Panthers accomplished just about everything they wanted to accomplish ... except actually win the Stanley Cup. They lost that final series 4-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights.
The desire to make that final step, to finally hoist the trophy at the end of the season, only grew over the past three months after coming so close but falling just short.
“We’re just going to be hungrier this year,” said center and captain Aleksander Barkov, heading into his 11th season with the Panthers. “We know what we did and how we did and it’s possible [to make another run] with the way we do it. All we’ve got to do is just be a little better.”
The journey to take that next step officially begins Thursday when the Panthers take the ice for the first time in training camp in Year 2 under coach Paul Maurice. The preseason begins Monday with a doubleheader against the Nashville Predators at Amerant Bank Arena, and the regular season starts on the road Oct. 12 at the Minnesota Wild.
One week after that, Oct. 19, the Panthers will make their home debut and a reminder of their end goal will be on full display when an Eastern Conference champions banner — not one commemorating a Stanley Cup championship — is unfurled.
“The more banners on the roof, the better,” Barkov said. “It’s a great achievement, but it’s not a Stanley Cup banner. We want to achieve that and we’re doing every we can to get to that point.”
A combination of injuries, underperformance and adjustments to Maurice’s system resulted in the Panthers struggling out of the gate. They were 24-22-6 at the All-Star Break before going on a dominant run in the second half of the season. Florida went 18-10-2 down the stretch, including a stretch of six wins in seven games and another six-game win streak in the final month of the season to secure their spot in the playoffs.
And then they beat the top-seeded Boston Bruins in seven games in the first round of the playoffs.
And then they beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in five games in the second round.
And then they swept the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals before ultimately falling to Vegas in the Stanley Cup final.
“Our standard,” general manager Bill Zito said, “is there is no next step. We need to play hockey ... at that level that the players executed their game through the second half and the playoffs. That needs to become a habit. That needs to become a way of life.”
Continuity will help. Maurice returns for his second season, as does the bulk of the Panthers’ core roster that was responsible for the playoff run.
So, too, will the mentality that this season is essentially a clean slate.
“The big thing for us is to understand everything starts from zero,” veteran goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky said. “We need to build again to push a little bit further.”
OK, maybe not exactly starting from zero, Bobrovsky later relented. The Panthers are able to take the lessons they learned — both good and bad — from last season to make themselves better this season.
But Bobrovsky’s main point is the Panthers can’t just rely on the fact that they made it to the Stanley Cup Final last season and expect that it will happen again this year.
“If you’re going to be too confident, then it’s going to hit you, no doubt,” Bobrovsky said. “It’s the pluses and minuses, depending on how you look at it. You have to be humble, appreciate the moment and enjoy the moment because it’s a whole different story.”
Tkachuk added: “You cannot dwell on your past, but you can keep it in your mind. ... We experienced something last year that is going to help us this year, so we can’t totally forget about it, but we’ve got to create some new memories.”
Ekblad, Montour injury updates
Zito said Panthers defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour are expected to be out until mid-December, although their exact situations remain fluid and there is no exact timetable for their returns.
Ekblad and Montour both underwent shoulder surgeries this offseason. Ekblad dislocated his right shoulder during the Eastern Conference finals. He also broke a foot in Game 2 of the Panthers’ first-round series against the Boston Bruins. Montour is recovering from a torn labrum.
With both expected to be sidelined for the start of the season, Gustav Forsling and Josh Mahura are the Panthers’ top two healthy returning defensemen heading into camp. Florida also signed Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Niko Mikkola, Mike Reilly and Dmitry Kulikov over the offseason and re-signed Lucas Carlsson and Casey Fitzgerald to add depth to the blue line.
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