The Florida Panthers 2021-22 NHL season started with a bang and ended with a whimper.
On Monday, the Tampa Bay Lightning swept the Panthers in the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs after a chaotic 2-0 victory in Game 4. The back-to-back Stanley Cup champions live to see another round after putting the Panthers to bed in a dominant, suffocating fashion.
Coming into the playoffs, the Panthers had the NHL’s best offense and won the Presidents’ Trophy for having the best record in the league by season’s end. And yet, the Panthers scored just three goals in four games in the series, not nearly enough at all to best the reigning Stanley Cup champions and Andrei Vasilevskiy in net.
GOTTA SEE IT: HOW SWEEP IT IS. ⚡️🧹
Ondrej Palat puts the icing on the cake for the @TBLightning as they take down the Presidents' Trophy winners in a sweep like fashion.
Presented by @Charmin | #EnjoyTheGo pic.twitter.com/rZxYHr4j2x
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 24, 2022
What a battle, @FlaPanthers. 🤝 pic.twitter.com/9taaRHhhUi
— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) May 24, 2022
For the Panthers, the loss is an incredibly demoralizing one after such a dominant regular season. But it’s clear where their faults in this postseason were, in their inability to score goals and look like the team that scored the most goals (337) in the NHL this season.
As expected with such a surprising loss, NHL fans weren’t kind to the Panthers after sputtering out of the playoffs in such an unremarkable way.
