Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Panthers playoff dreams dashed
Philly’s win ends Florida’s postseason hunt
SUNRISE — The death knell tolled at 5:44 p.m. on Saturday evening, signaling another postseason missed, another early summer and another year without a Stanley Cup.
With Philadelphia’s 5-0 win over the New York Rangers on Saturday, the Florida Panthers were eliminated from playoff contention. It was the fifth time in the last six seasons the franchise has missed the playoffs. The team has not won a playoff series since 1996.
The Flyers just needed to pick up one point to clinch the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference and eliminate the Panthers. Claude Giroux notched a hat trick to power the Flyers past the Rangers.
The Panthers conclude the regular season with a home game Saturday night against Buffalo and a visit to Boston on Sunday.
Any sort of playoff push was unlikely judging by the standings at the All-Star break. The Panthers stared at a 12-point deficit, the largest they faced all year. Roberto Luongo, their top goalie, was injured. James Reimer, their backup goalie, was hurt. Their forward corps lacked depth; their defense, experience.
But then Florida discovered its game.
Third-string goaltender Harri Sateri paced a four-game winning streak. A potent power
play anchored a strong road trip through western Canada. Late-game magic in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High spurred a sweep of a six-game homestand.
The Panthers ripped off a 15-3-1 stretch, getting as close as one point from a playoff spot with three games in hand. Playoff probabilities neared 80 percent as Florida became hockey’s hottest team and Aleksander Barkov sizzled as one of the game’s best players.
Puzzling losses followed. Florida gave up five goals in a home loss to Ottawa. Four days later, it suffered a twogoal loss to hapless Edmonton. During a three-game losing streak on its final extended road trip of the season, the Senators beat the Panthers again, this time in overtime.
As Florida suffered its worst losing streak since January, its peers in the Eastern Conference kept winning. New Jersey lost twice in regulation across a three-week span. Columbus blazed to a 10-game winning streak. Philadelphia even challenged for the Metropolitan Division title.
In the end, the Panthers could not overcome a poor start in Bob Boughner’s first season behind the bench. Florida stumbled to 4-8-2 start as its defense got decimated in embarrassing defeats to Tampa Bay and Columbus. Its top line was the only consistent one as the team adjusted to Boughner’s new north-south structured systems.
The Panthers did not win at least three consecutive games until a five-game stretch at the end of December. Even after that, Florida followed by losing seven of its next nine games.
“I think that we’ve proven that we can play with the best teams,” Boughner said Saturday morning. “We peaked at the right time of year. Our home record’s in a good spot. There’s a lot of good things. It’s tough to talk about that right now. It’s something that we’ll sit back once the season’s done and we’ll analyze what we need to tinker with and get better at and things that we did well.
“I expect that next year, when we come back, that we’ll hit the ground running and we’ll have a good start and won’t be in the situation that we’re in now. It is what it is.”
Next season, the Panthers will enter their second season under Boughner and will be two years removed from the disastrous 2015-16 season in which Tom Rowe took over as general manager, Gerard Gallant was fired, Florida suffered injuries to top players and the Panthers finished with 81 points.
This year’s Panthers can finish with 96 points with wins in their final two games. That would be the third-highest point total in franchise history.
The team could remain largely intact. Barkov, Vincent Trocheck and Jonathan Huberdeau are all signed long-term, as are defensemen Keith Yandle, Aaron Ekblad and Mike Matheson. The only unrestricted free agents are Radim Vrbata (who intends to retire) and Connor Brickley.
Alexander Petrovic, Frank Vatrano, Jared McCann and MacKenzie Weegar are all restricted free agents.
Henrik Borgström, signed by the Panthers last week, should become a more regular contributor in the lineup. Owen Tippett could also contribute, and Henrik Haapala could return from Finland as an impact player.
“I don’t know if we’d done anything differently,” Boughner said this past week. “I think it was just something that had to take time. It was a cycle that they went through last year and the offseason and this year. … I think it was just a process that this team had to go through.”