MIAMI — A few days had passed since the Florida Panthers’ record-setting season ended with a stunning sweep at the hands of the rival Tampa Bay Lightning and the Panthers couldn’t believe it.
“I woke up this morning thinking we were playing,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said Wednesday after arriving at FLA Live Arena on the day Florida could have been playing Game 5 of the second round.
It was stunning not even necessarily because it ended in Round 2 — the Lightning, after all, have won the last two Stanley Cups — but because of how quickly it did. Even though the Panthers made the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 1996, they still haven’t won a game there since then after losing their second-round series 4-0 to Tampa Bay on Monday.
For now, it makes for complicated feelings about the 2021-22 NHL season. By every reasonable measure, it was one of the two best in Florida history. The Panthers set regular-season records for points, wins, points percentage and goals, and won only their second first-round series ever.
They also felt like it was a missed opportunity. Presidents’ Trophy winners are supposed to be true Cup contenders, and Florida couldn’t even win a game in the second round.
“I did not see this coming at all,” said 42-year-old forward Joe Thornton, who signed a one-year deal with the Panthers last year to chase a championship.
The good: Breakouts and bouncebacks
Really, just about everything in the regular season was good for Florida.
On offense, there were breakout performances everywhere: Star center Aleksander Barkov set a new career high with 39 goals, All-Star winger Jonathan Huberdeau set the NHL for assists by a left wing in a single season, forward Sam Reinhart justified the first-round pick the Panthers paid for him by averaging more than a point per game, rookie center Anton Lundell scored 44 points at just 20 and wingers Carter Verhaeghe, Anthony Duclair and Sam Bennett all scored at least 24 goals to form a formidable — and team-controlled — supporting cast.
On defense and in goal, there were bouncebacks: Star defenseman Aaron Ekblad didn’t miss a beat after fracturing his leg late last season and star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky posted his best single-season save percentage since he joined Florida in 2019.
As much as Bill Zito has put his mark on this team in less two years as general manager, the Panthers are still a team built from two different philosophies and those two ideas came together this year.
Back in 2019, Florida had a potent offense led by Huberdeau and Barkov, and an abysmal defense, so former general manager Dale Tallon signed Bobrovsky to a seven-year $70 million deal to fix it. Back in 2020, Zito saw a team devoid of much depth, so he prioritized, so he prioritized role players over high profile additions.
Now, the Panthers have a historically good offense — at least in the regular season — and a goalie with the ability to cover up anyone’s mistakes.
Of all the aforementioned players, everyone other than Bobrovsky is 28 or younger, too.
“The Florida Panthers are going to be good for a long time,” Thornton said. “It’s exciting around here now.”
The bad: Offense’s disappearing act
After just six total postseason wins in the last two years, Florida is sort of done with just being a great regular-season team, though.
The challenge now for the Panthers is figuring out why their regular-season success hasn’t carried over to the playoffs.
“I don’t think we need to change anything drastic,” Bennett said. “We have all the pieces there.”
Still, three goals in Round 2 after averaging 4.11 per game in the regular season are hard to write off as just a fluke.
Both the Lightning and Washington Capitals set a blueprint for how to slow down Florida, by clogging up the neutral zone to slow down the Panthers’ rush game and clogging up the slot to limit Huberdeau’s passing ability.
Florida wound up mostly playing a one-dimensional dump and chase game, and settling for too many shots from the outside because it was never equipped to cycle the puck effectively and manufacture consistent offense once it set up in the zone. A 1-for-31 performance on the power play in the postseason was also inexcusable, especially since Brunette ran the power play as an assistant coach before he took over as the interim following former coach Joel Quenneville’s resignation in the first month of the season following revelations about his involvement in the Chicago Blackhawks’ mishandling of a 2010 sexual-assault allegation.
In less than a week, the Panthers went from the joy of a long-awaited first-round victory to answering all those same questions about whether this can work in the playoffs.
“We weren’t playing our best hockey during playoffs this year,” Bennett said. “That’s something that we’re going to have to figure out.”
Panthers offseason outlook, preview
Florida has the bulk of their roster under contract for next year — including 12 of its top 13 scorers from last year — although it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re just going to run it back.
— Impending unrestricted free agents: C/LW Joe Thornton, C/LW/RW Claude Giroux, C/LW/RW Maxim Mamin, C/RW Noel Acciari, LW/RW Mason Marchment, D Ben Chiarot, D Robert Hagg, D Petteri Lindbohm, D Markus Nutivaara
— Impending restricted free agents: G Jonas Johansson, C Eetu Luostarinen, D Lucas Carlsson
The Panthers have less than $4 million in cap space available, according to CapFriendly.com, and need to find three forwards and one defenseman to fill out a 22-man roster. Giroux, who came to Sunrise in exchange for a first-round pick ahead of the trade deadline, is the highest-profile pending free agent and said he’d like to be back next year, but the Panthers would have to make trades to clear salary to make it happen.
Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Keith Yandle, as a reminder, has a $5.4 million dead cap hit for next season after Florida cut him last year. After next season, the Panthers will have much more flexibility because Yandle’s cap hit drops to $1.2 million. It will make it harder for Florida to resign and sign players this offseason than it will be to sign people to extensions.
It means it’s probably fair to assume the Panthers will be active in the trade market, both because Zito has been since the day he took over as GM and because of the cap crunch Florida is facing, with Huberdeau entering the final year of his contract and due for an extension. Bennett, Duclair, Verhaeghe and right Patric Hornqvist are all making between $3-5.3 million, which makes them relatively easy to move, if necessary. A buyout for Hornqvist would mean a $1.8 million cap hit for each of the next two seasons, as opposed to a $5.3 million cap hit for this year and none for the year after.
The most valuable trade trip Florida might have, however, is star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, who’s entering the final year of his deal. The Panthers are staring at a situation where more than half of all their cap space could be tied up in contracts for Huberdeau, Barkov, Ekblad, Weegar and Bobrovsky. If this sounds unpalatable, Weegar might have to be the casualty to both both open up short-term flexibility and perhaps help recoup some of the picks spent to add Giroux, Reinhart, Bennett and Chiarot in the last two years. Of course, Florida is a contender and Weegar would help the Panthers next year. Zito could also view him as a worthwhile one-year rental.
The wild card in all of this is Bobrovsky. Star rookie goaltender Spencer Knight is ready to take over at any moment and Bobrovsky, 33, finally has some positive trade value after posting a .919 save percentage in Round 2 and Florida explored trading him ahead of the deadline, Sportsnet reported.
Although the Panthers would still likely have to attach something to unload Bobrovsky’s salary, the long-term flexibility might be worth it. Eventually, it’s going to be tough to keep both Bobrovsky and Knight around, given all the other stars Florida will have to pay as it chases championships.
