"Pucks with Haggs" publishes twice a week. Subscribe here and get Pucks with Haggs straight to your email! Please feel free to comment, share, like, etc. And Subscribe! Thanks and see you at the rinks!
There’s undeniably something special going on with the Florida Panthers.
The Sunshine State’s “other” hockey team is off to a 10-0-1 start to the 2021-22 NHL regular season and has rocketed to first place in the Atlantic Division behind a deep, well-rounded hockey club that’s finally living up to their potential. They have an NHL-best plus-22 goal differential as well, with the Boston Bruins as the only team taken them down in a shootout at TD Garden more than a week ago.
At 10-0-1, Florida has tied for the best 11-game start to a season in NHL HISTORY, matching the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1994 and Buffalo Sabres in 2006. It’s tough to argue against them being the NHL’s best team a month into the season, so what does top Panthers goal-scorer Anthony Duclair think about that?
A lot of it, of course, is about the talented core group that’s been there for a while and has developed while taking their lumps in a gauntlet-like division with the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning. Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Aaron Ekblad were always considered young players full of boundless potential, and now they’re all entering the prime of their NHL careers.
“We really are [like brothers]. We push each other every day to get better. It’s not just like ‘Hey let’s come here and hang out because we’re good guys.’ We come here to push each other forward and we have one and the same goal,” said Barkov. “Everybody has the same goal and we’re working toward that.
“Every day we’re going out there to work and have fun, and to have a little joy on the ice. It gets more and more fun every game. You know you’re playing well, and you can just keep getting better with every game. I think we’re just having fun. Nobody wants that to stop.”
The 26-year-old Barkov won his first Selke Trophy last season and Huberdeau reached All-League status last year for the first time while the 25-year-old Ekblad is among the NHL’s most talented defensemen when healthy. It felt like every year the Panthers were the trendy pick to finally break through led by their trio of young stars, but it never fully materialized amidst issues with lineup depth, goaltending and a hockey club that simply never quite came together.
All that has changed this season, though, for the Panthers after hinting at their arrival last spring during the Stanley Cup playoffs when they pushed the eventual champion Lightning as hard anybody did during the postseason. Florida extended the first round series to seven games against a loaded Tampa Bay team, and then GM Bill Zito added again this offseason while constructing a roster with quality at every turn.
It really started at last season’s NHL trade deadline when Sam Bennett and Brandon Montour were brought in to beef up Florida’s roster depth and helped give the Panthers the talent boost, they needed to be potential spoilers in the postseason.
Sam Reinhart is a five time 20-goal scorer when he was with the Sabres, for goodness sakes, and he’s dropped into a third line role with the Panthers after Florida spent a first round pick to get him last summer. That’s true depth when an established offensive player like Reinhart isn’t always cracking the top-6 group.
Even 42-year-old Jumbo Joe Thornton sensed something special was going on in Florida this season and signed a one-year deal to go along for the ride in his compelling search for his first career Stanley Cup. Then add in 20-year-old Finnish rookie Anton Lundell, 20-year-old rookie goaltender Spencer Knight and former first round pick Owen Tippett, and the Panthers have a young wave of talented players as well.
This doesn’t even mention depth guys like Mason Marchment, McKenzie Weegar, Frank Vatrano, Carter Verhaeghe or Gus Forsling, or hard-hitting gritty veterans like Patric Hornqvist and Radko Gudas.
Those guys will make the Panthers a tougher out in the postseason than they’ve been in the past.
Anthony Duclair might even be the face of the Panthers surge. Here’s a guy that the Ottawa Senators walked away from after a breakout season, Florida was able to sign for a bargain basement $1.7 million contract last season and now has locked him in for a three-year, $ 9 million contract moving forward. The 26-year-old Duclair has repaid the Panthers with eight goals in 11 games while torching teams with his breathtaking speed/skill combo.
Just ask the Bruins if you don’t believe this humble hockey writer.
Or resurgent goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who is finally playing up to the millions of dollars that the Panthers gave him with a massive free agent contract a couple of seasons ago. “Bob” leads the NHL with a .948 save percentage and stands third in the league with a 1.72 goals against average after reverting back to Columbus form.
In fact, the Florida Panthers goalie combo of Bobrovsky and Knight might turn out to be the best goaltending tandem in the entire NHL this season.
The Boston Bruins are the only NHL team to have beaten this Florida Panthers group to this point this year, but they came away impressed with Florida’s depth and quality at every turn on their NHL roster.
“They have a quick strike offense, their wings are fast, the ability to stretch you out and get going the other way,” said admiring Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy, who noted that Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper really came away impressed with Florida’s improvement in last year’s playoffs in conversations with the B’s head coach. “They’re putting pucks in the net so that’s the first thing. Then they’ve got D they can get up there and support as well. Then they’ve got two goalies that are really on their game as well. They’ll give up some chances but when you’re getting saves, you can get going the other way and have a little more juice in your game when you’re getting those stops.”
The most impressive part of this Panthers’ early season run?
Not even the odious presence of ex-head coach Joel Quenneville amidst the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault coverup scandal could derail them like it’s clearly imploded the Hawks in Chicago this year. It was a clear misstep to allow Quenneville to coach that last game vs. the Bruins in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and it was undoubtedly a distraction for a time when he rightfully resigned as head coach.
But interim head coach Andrew Brunette has jumped right in, quelled any rumors that John Tortorella was going to swoop in and land the job and showed that it might just be Florida’s turn to truly elevate to a Cup contender in the Atlantic Division.
“We’re a family in that room,” said Panthers defenseman MacKenzie Weegar earlier this week. “It’s been a tough challenge for us the last week or so. It really showed us how close we are.”
Sometimes, the adversity and the tough times take a talented hockey club and forge them into something special and better with tight bonds of solidarity. That might just be happening with a deep, talented Panthers group that certainly appears to be ascending anyway and might just be the best team in the NHL this season.
