The Panthers are good enough to be a playoff team. Here's how they're going to make it happen.
The NHL is entering the home stretch of the regular season, and the Florida Panthers find themselves in a much different situation than they did just one year ago.
Instead of sailing into the postseason with a division title, this year’s Panthers are facing an uphill climb just to sneak into the dance as a Wild Card.
Following Thursday's games, the Panthers sit three points back of both Pittsburgh and the Islanders for the two Wild Card spots.
Florida has the same amount of games remaining as the Penguins, 14, and have two in hand on New York, which has just 12 left to play.
Indeed, its been a trying year to this point, but a season full of frustrating losses and inconsistent results is about to take a turn for the better.
Well, at least on this website they are.
In an extremely hypothetical and glass-half-full, but still realistic and not-too-far-fetched way, here is how the Panthers are going to get into the playoffs while looking like a team that others actually won’t want to face when they get there.
Step one is Bob.
For any of this to work, it must be predicated on Sergei Bobrovsky providing consistent, above-average, confidence instilling goaltending.
The best stretch of hockey Bobrovsky has had since signing with Florida during the summer of 2019 was late last season into the playoffs. The team may have fallen off once the postseason started, but nobody was pointing the finger toward the goal crease.
Had Bob not played as well as he did last spring, the Panthers wouldn’t have made it out of the first round.
He has shown signs recently of playing at a similar level, and for Florida to become a feared team again once again, it must start with Bobrovsky.
Step two is Aaron Ekblad.
He will return to playing like the Norris Trophy-caliber defenseman we’ve come to expect, shaking off the issues that have hindered his abilities this season.
There have been plenty of flashes of greatness from Ekblad this season. It’s in there. He’s clearly still got it.
Now those flashes will become a blinding light, and Ekblad will once again move through opposition defenders like a hot knife cutting through butter.
Elevated play from Ekblad on both ends of the ice will help increase scoring at 5-on-5 and perhaps more importantly, give a major boost to Florida’s power play while simultaneously easing pressure in the defensive zone, and that goes for all levels, even strength or up or down a man.
That leads to step three, which is special teams.
The Panthers have shown at times during the season they can have a lethal power play and an effective penalty kill, but not usually at the same time and in terms of the power play, the results just haven’t matched up with the talent Florida can throw out there on the man advantage.
That’s all changing in a big way for the healthy and humming Panthers.
With a full arsenal of two-way forwards and fearless defensemen with endless motors, Florida’s penalty kill will become the hardest to score on in the league. Teams will be lucky to get a shot through the likes of Eetu Luostarinen, Eric Staal, Sasha Barkov and Energizer Bunny Gus Forsling (seriously, just watch Forsling on any penalty kill. Does. Not. Stop. Working.)
The power play being dominant really shouldn’t be difficult to envision. There is immense talent in Florida’s forward ranks and guys on the back line who know how to score. We know what it looks like when it’s clicking.
Step four is the depth.
Finally healthy, the Panthers can now roll four lines on a regular basis, something that was a major strength of last season’s Presidents’ Trophy winning squad.
Without missing players due to injury, the talent can trickle down into the third and fourth lines. That leads to more balanced scoring and allows the coaching staff to manage the minutes of the big guns.
Eric Staal will continue producing offensively, but now he’ll do it from the fourth line. Streaky Sam Reinhart getting hot at the right time while playing on the third line is exactly the kind of break Florida will be getting in the coming months.
Reinhart’s resurgence will then rub off on Anton Lundell, who looked his best this season when skating next to a healthy and confident Barkov and will reap similar rewards alongside Reino.
The Verhaeghe-Bennett-Tkachuk combination will become Florida’s most feared line due to the combination of scoring threat and sandpaper while the sudden infusion of Anthony Duclair to a line with a now-healthy Barkov and rapidly ascending Luostarinen will keep that trio humming and give the pundits something to talk about other than domination of Chucky’s line.
That’s it.
That’s how the Panthers are going to transform from a team unable to string wins together to one that will march through the final 14 games on its schedule with relative ease and maintain that level of dominance into the playoffs.
The pieces are all there, they’ve just got to put them together.
And why can’t they?
As the wise J.P. reminded us many times during the classic movie Angels in the Outfield…it could happen.