Three short summers, two Stanley Cups, and nearly an entire roster coming back next season. The Florida Panthers are poised to go for the three-peat right now, having lost only four players to free agency but potentially one more down the road, depending on the cap situation. If the Panthers have proven anything over the last three seasons, it’s that the front office knows how to bring in players to fill any gaps in the lineup. Blockbuster trades were the name of the game last trade deadline, with Jones coming in with time on his current contract, and now Marchand has been extended for the next six years. Florida’s roster is more than a formidable juggernaut come playoff time. Last season showed that the Panthers are more than content to win enough games to make the postseason; they don’t have to win their division or require home ice advantage. The Cats had one of the most dominant postseason runs last year, and until another team proves they can beat them, it’s hard to imagine them coming up short of the three-peat.
Roster Depth:
The Cats have a great amount of roster depth that some teams can only dream about. With only Barkov and Bobrovsky making $10M, it’s allowed the Panthers to create a team where the bulk of their star players are making somewhere in the $6-9M range. Tkachuk makes $9.5M, Reinhart’s making $8.63M, Bennett just got a raise to $8M, and Verhaeghe signed his extension at the top of the year for $7M. For how good Anton Lundell is, people forget he’s still extremely young and only going into his fifth season in the NHL. But he got a very handsome pay raise last summer from $925K to $5M deal for six years that will take him to age 28, the same age that Reinhart signed his 8-year extension last summer. The Marchand deal has raised a lot of eyebrows, especially when there was talk of him getting $8M in free agency. Instead, he chose to re-sign in Florida on a six-year deal at a $5.25M AAV. On the back end, Jones is the highest-paid defenseman with a contract not made by Zito, with some salary retained by Chicago. Ekblad has stated numerous times that Florida is home, and he has no intention of leaving. That resulted in his new eight-year contract worth $6.1 million. Forsling extended last season for eight years at $5.75M. Mikkola rounds out the top 4 d-men in the third year of his $2.5M contract. The end result is a great mix of players who have proven to be Championship caliber and want to stay on a team they know they can win with.
There’s been a lot of chatter around state income taxes and how it’s unfair for teams like the Panthers, Vegas, and Dallas. But that’s not the narrative when it comes to Nashville and Seattle, which also have no state income taxes. At the end of the day, you can’t put a price on happiness or locker room culture. In the last two years, every player for Florida has spoken to the media about how good the team culture is, how welcoming the players are, and how comfortable they feel to just be themselves. HC Paul Maurice has said in plenty of interviews that they don’t ask the players to be anything other than who they are, just that they do the handful of things that they ask everyone on the team to do on the ice. Looking at the Panthers’ roster construction, it’s mostly made from players other teams didn’t want. There was plenty of celebrating from Chicago fans when the trade went down earlier this year, Schmidt was bought out of his Winnipeg contract, Forsling came in off a waiver claim, Verhaeghe was a non-NHL regular or 4th line player with Tampa, Buffalo chose to trade away Reinhart, ect. The list goes on for a good number of players on the team. The next biggest group would be players that Florida drafted, like Barkov, Ekblad, Lundell, and Samoskevich. And finally, there’s the small group of players who chose to be traded to the Cats in Tkachuk and Marchand. There was plenty of criticism over the Bobrovsky contract when it was made. Although it’s taken some time, that’s since stopped as Bob has only gotten better with time and brought the franchise two Stanley Cups. These players are bigger names in the league now due to their current success, but that wasn’t the case when most of them came into the team. Bill Zito and his front office have done an excellent job of identifying players who fit the team at a lower price point and given them reasonable pay increases if they chose to stay based on their previous contract. The outlier in this would be the Marchand contract, but if previous reporting is correct, then Florida offered Marchand more term than he was asking for in Boston. Could some of them get more money on the open market? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s what the player wants to do.
Defensive Structure:
The Panthers have built success on the back of HC Paul Maurice’s defense-first system that emphasizes hard forechecking and being comfortable doing the dump and chase. No team was better at puck retrieval during the playoffs than the Cats, and it led to goals more often than not. The Panthers aren’t reliant on puck possession to enter the offensive zone, so one of the few ways teams can beat them is by simply outworking them. But come playoff time, there hasn’t been a team that’s been able to do that over a full seven-game series. The hybrid style defense they play allows for a lot of support, where they play man-on-man up high and zone coverage deep, giving the team multiple options for breakouts. Florida’s star players have also built their game off being strong 200-foot players, and where Barkov leads the team follows. The talent level may not be the same from the top line to the fourth line, but the style of play remains the same. This leads to wave after wave coming at opponents, and it wears them down late in series. They aren’t reinventing the wheel down in Sunrise; they’re simply doing it better than everyone else. It helps to have huge defensive talents like Barkov, Forsling, Ekblad, and Reinhart, but at the end of the day, their game is built on the 5-man unit playing like a 5-man unit and buy-in from everyone on the ice. The anchor point of it all is, of course, Bobrovsky, who has been stellar the last two years in the playoffs. The team plays with a lot of confidence knowing that Bob is in net and can make the game-changing saves if needed. He’s the last line of defense and their greatest penalty killer. Last year, his Bobbery save went viral, and this season, he had great performances go unnoticed due to either extracurriculars or the Panthers’ offense taking over the game.
Overwhelming Offense:
Winning games by outscoring the opponent isn’t how Florida likes to win games but they can win that way. And I don’t mean that in a literal sense because that is factually what you have to do to win. What I mean by that is that the Panthers don’t want to get into matches where it’s a high-scoring affair like the 6-5 regular-season match against Edmonton last season. If given the choice, they’d rather win games 2-1 and have it be a low-event game that grinds you down. But with the addition of Marchand to the offense it’s given the Cats another weapon in their toolbelt, the ability to blow teams out. In 16 of their 23 playoff games, they scored 4 goals or more, and in 14 of their 16 wins, they scored 4 goals or more; the only two wins they didn’t score 4+ were the two 2-0 shutouts against Tampa and Toronto. In total, they scored 94 playoff goals, set a new road goal record at 61, and Sam Bennett set a new individual road goal record at 13. The Cats had 11 players with 12+ points and 6 players with 20+ points. Not to mention all seven defensemen getting at least a goal as well. There was simply no way to completely shut down the offense. If you keep Barkov’s line quiet, then Bennett’s line stepped up. If you kept the forward group in check, then the defensemen got in on the action. With that kind of depth, it’s very difficult to keep the team down in a playoff series. The Luostarinen-Lundell-Marchand line only had 10 regular-season games together before the playoffs, and fans witnessed what they could do together after so little time spent on the ice. That line is only going to get better with a full 82-game regular season.
The X Factor:
Championship teams have this intangible about them. Something special that you can’t always put your finger on, but it’s there. Florida’s got that in spades as a team that learned from failure in their first Stanley Cup Final. Whether it’s Matthew Tkachuk single-handedly taking down the Hurricanes in 2023, any of Verhaeghe’s game-winning goals, Reinhart being automatic on the powerplay, Forsling’s defense that shuts down star players, Barkov taking on 3 players at once in OT, or Bobrovsky robbing opponents of goals, there’s something special about the mix of players and personalities. Honestly, who wants to try and get into a chirping contest against a team that has Tkachuk, Marchand, and Bennett on it? If you want to start fights, well, they can do that too. The Cats are always ready to drop mitts at the drop of a hat. It’s not often that Forsling, of all people, will get into a fist fight, but he did it last season to defend Ekblad. Special teams? Florida had one of the best power plays in the playoffs last season and the best penalty kill, so there’s not much advantage there. The Panthers can win the mental game too. How many teams or players did they get to stop playing hockey in the last two years? Boston spent two games trying to get retaliation, Hagel cheap-shotted Barkov, Aho threw a cheap hit on Reinhart, Toronto had no answers in Games 5 & 7, and Edmonton completely lost their heads during Game 3 of the Cup Final. That’s not to say that Florida is unbeatable, they are fallible, especially when they have a bad night. But it’s much harder to come by when the games matter most, and this team has proven to be able to learn from its previous mistakes. Their game is one that travels well and it’s why they had so much success this season despite not having home ice advantage in any round. And don’t forget the power of Dairy Queen during rounds 3 & 4, Florida went 5-0 after trips for Blizzards.
No team is perfect, but the Panthers are a perfect blend of players and coaches playing in a system that’s extremely strong. They have the versatility to beat opponents in several different ways, play a hard-edged game, and also have some elite finishing ability. Over-aggression is probably their biggest weakness, but overall, the Cats are in a strong spot to three-peat. With another short offseason and the Olympics next year, I think injuries are the biggest concern for Florida. I’d expect a regular season similar to this past one, they win enough games to make the playoffs but don’t necessarily win their division. And depending on where things stand come April, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them giving guys the night off over the last two and a half weeks. Florida’s in a great position with 10 players signed through at least 2030 and a looking to do what few have done, brand themselves a dynasty with a third straight Stanley Cup Championship.
ITR 47: Then There Was Nothing – Inside The Rink
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