As the NHL’s reigning back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, the Florida Panthers rightfully came into the season as the team to beat this year.
But that was before losing star forwards Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk to long-term injuries that have kept them out of action for the first four months. And although Florida has admirably tried to carry on without the services of two foundational players, we’re now at a point where the Panthers are drifting further and further from a playoff spot – and are in danger of missing out.
Indeed, Florida has gone 4-4-1 in their past nine games, and on Friday, Jan. 16, they were steamrolled by the Carolina Hurricanes by a whopping 9-1 score. The Panthers are now in 11th place in the Eastern Conference and in seventh place in the Atlantic Division with a 25-19-3 record. With half the season in the books, they’re only three points out of last place in the Atlantic and 15th place in the East.
That’s about as worrying as it can get for Panthers fans.
And it’s not as if Florida is in a position to make the most of a non-playoff year by landing a top draft pick, as they don’t have their first-round pick this season. Panthers GM Bill Zito has spent much of his trade capital in previous seasons, and at the moment, he has only $237,293 in salary cap space.
That being said, there is good news on the horizon.
If the Panthers do fail to get into the postseason, they’d be the sixth team in NHL history to win a Cup one year, then miss out on the playoffs the following season. The most recent team to suffer that fate was the Los Angeles Kings in 2014-15.
That said, a team can only do so much when two of its top players aren’t available to play. And that’s where the Panthers have been this season. The injury bug has put them in a position they can’t claw out from. The next 10 games of their upcoming schedule features winnable games against the Winnipeg Jets (twice), Chicago Blackhawks, St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins. If Florida can’t make the most of those games, securing a playoff spot is going to be nearly impossible.
The Panthers have a lot of obvious wear-and-tear that comes with playing many playoff games, and there’s a lack of urgency to their game right now that does not bode well for the rest of their season. You can never completely count out any team until they’re officially eliminated from playoff competition, but Florida very much looks like a group that doesn’t have enough horses to get them across the finish line.
And if the Panthers do miss out on postseason play, no one can say that they didn’t see it coming. As soon as Barkov and Tkachuk were sidelined for a long period of time, the Panthers had their backs to the wall. And while the rest of Florida’s roster has tried their best to keep the team competitive in the absence of its two best forwards, the cold reality is it’s looking like it’s not going to be enough to extend their year after the end of the regular season.
Florida has been a powerhouse in recent years, but much of that power has been drained this season. And the house Zito has built doesn’t look like it’s able to withstand the impact of losing Barkov and Tkachuk.
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