The Florida Panthers Are Breaking The NHL

The Florida Panthers Are Breaking The NHL

For the third straight year, the Florida Panthers are heading back to the Stanley Cup final and are without a doubt the gold standard of what success looks like in the NHL. The very team that emulates their style in the Carolina Hurricanes fell short in five games. And in game five, we saw just how deadly this Panther team can be even when they aren’t at their best. So, let’s take a look at how the Panthers moved on and what it means for the rest of the league moving forward. Now, game five was a rocky start for Florida. In our game four breakdown, we talked about how the Hurricanes finally had success beating the Panthers for check. And one of the ways they were successful at it was by using these high flips whenever they were in immediate danger. It’s not the greatest way to control the pace of the game, but against a team like Florida, you can punt your problems down the ice and have an attacker give chase in the process, so hopefully you can force a turnover. 5 minutes into the first period, Carolina Special gets the puck and he’s backpedaling into his own end. Now down the wall he’s got pressure and also he’s got pressure coming from the net. So he says screw this, I’m not dealing with it and he airmails it. It goes right to Forsling on the Panthers who’s going to try and make a cheeky little play over to Barov, but Aaho the Dario reads it like a textbook. Picks off the pass. It’s a B-way and he beats officer Babroski under the glove and over the pad. Kane’s fans are going nuts one zip. Let’s take her to the end of the first and it’s still one- nothing. The Panthers are buzzing in the ozone. Their pressure is everywhere on our boy with two first names in Jackson Blake. He’s got Barkov breathing down his neck. His options in the middle are closed off, so don’t do anything stupid. High flip that garbage out of there and give chase. That is exactly what they do. And Carolina’s going to pressure Mika who picks up the puck right away. Now, this is an awkward spot for a defenseman. You’re not quite confident enough to go DD with the pressure coming at you and you’re skating backwards with possession. So, the safest bailout option is, of course, to go up the boards. AO again call this guy Professor X with his ability to read people’s minds in this game. He cuts off the wall play and now he’s got a ton of speed with possession against Mikola. With Mika backing up that gap has AO licking his chops. Mika also gives Aaho a nice scream with his legs being the size of the Golden Gate Bridge and it leaks through underneath the arm of Officer Bob again. Two nothing Hurricanes. What’s going on here? The Hurricanes look like the Panthers. The Panthers look like the Hurricanes. Paul Maurice goes into the locker room, cancels all the DQ trips for Bad Marshon, flips a table and says, “Let’s get back to our game here.” In the second period, Carolina doesn’t do themselves any favors. and Yummy. Alltime brain fart on this penalty. Just loses body positioning and bear hugs Rodriguez. Two minutes for you can’t do that. Get in the box, pal. Think about what you did wrong. And now Florida’s power play has a chance to get them back in this game. You need some energy. It starts with captain Sasha Barov. Carolina’s going to win this draw. and watch him just bust his ass right to the far end boards to cut off the clearing attempt. He wins this 50/50 puck by absorbing the contact, getting the retrieval, and now the Panthers set up. Reinhardt slips through, opens up the space. We go Dto D. Eblad sifts one through traffic and Kachchuck tips it home. Now they got some life. 30 seconds later, we know how similar these two teams are in their execution, right? So, Florida takes a page out of Carolina’s winning formula in game four with stretch passes. Look at Seth Jones here. Remember when everyone’s like, “H, he can’t play. He’s all washed up. How about shedding you up with a little twinkle toes on Logan Stankovven? A quick cut back to beat the F1.” And you’ll notice that there’s four Panthers in the zone and no pressure on the boards from Carolina. Why? Because Kachchuck has darted to the offensive blue line to get Carolina’s D pressure to back off. The stretch pass is a success. They beat Carolina’s forche. Simple bump pass underneath and you can’t draw it up any better. The execution is flawless and Rodriguez ties it up for the Panthers. Two to2, the Hurricanes are spinning and not even four minutes later, the Panthers have an ozone draw and are going to run a set play. Marshon, the right winger here, is going to come underneath on the faceoff win and then curl towards the net. But watch Lundell off the faceoff. Not only does he win the faceoff, but he’s just going to beat Aaho to the net like an ax. It’s a quick back door bang bang play. And just like that, poof. All of Carolina’s hard work is gone. After going into the second, up by two, they head into the third, down by one. Got to stick to it if you’re the Hurricanes, though. And pressure every chance you get. A standard D pinch here by Gosspare on the wall. Shuts down that breakout and it finds its way to Seth Jarvis. And that is pretty little soft chip over the glove of Bob. Just a great read. Seeing that Bob gets caught with his pants down trying to go for the poke check. Jarvis hits him with the fadeaway jumper and this is all tied up. You know, Florida’s going to mix it up too and so we get the Sam Bennett special shortly after. Crashes the net. Little Shawn Michaels elbow from the top rope right to the temple anytime he gets close to the goalie. Leaf fans are seeing that and are like that pisses off Fred X a little bit. No same day delivery for Sam Bennett in the near future. But don’t worry because Barov is delivering a master class. He gets the puck behind the net and just takes Dmitri Orloff to school. Just follow me this way, son. Holds him off like a toddler and then says, “Get off me, boy.” with the cut back. And here’s where it gets cheeky. Robinson here books that Verhaggy is below the goal line. So now he’s going to try and help out Orv, but he anticipates that Bararkov is going to eventually pass this puck to Verhagi. Nope. Barov pulls off the vanishing act, catches him reaching, and now Verhaggy is all alone in front. And that is the game winner. The Panthers hold on and they go back to the cup final for the third straight season. Afterwards, reporters asked Rob Brymore if falling short multiple times in the conference finals would lead to them eventually changing their play style. To which he responded that the Panthers play the same way. They are simply the standard. This series as a whole was basically identical in how both of these teams wanted to play their system. The difference was just the level of execution and depth. The way Carolina took game four was the same way that the Panthers took games one to three. Both have an aggressive forch check that uses an entire fiveman unit. And in order to bypass that, they both use the same strategies like the high flip and the stretch pass to negate each other’s forche. At the end of the day, it simply came down to execution and the Panthers won that battle. They are a welloiled machine and whether they go on to repeat as cup champs or not, their standard of play will have 31 other teams trying to copy their exact model to have success. Of course, this will bring up the debate of how advantageous it is for southern teams in the NHL. Some of them, like Florida, are tax-free states, which makes their deals a lot more teamfriendly in the long run. Although, I didn’t see people saying that 10, 15 years ago when the Florida Panthers were absolutely cheeks. Regardless of the advantages they may have now, no one can take away from the culture they built from top down and how they’ve been executing. The Panthers are changing the standard for what is successful in today’s NHL. And in the process, we could be seeing a modern dynasty form right in our eyes if they go back and repeat. As for the Carolina Hurricanes, it’s tough to think about what are the right next steps for this team. You could argue they need more star power and you’d probably be right, but they did pick up Ranton in mid-season only to trade him away after he simply just didn’t fit the system. It’s hard to point the finger at Rod Brymore also, despite being 1 and 12 in conference finals games. He’s still got this roster to this point. Perhaps they look at more offense from their defense and maybe there’s a better solution in net than Freddy. He was really good at times, but between the inconsistency of injuries and play, some question marks are in that position. Either way, Carolina is just another team in the East that is left soularching because the Panthers beat them in a sevengame series. So, what do you think of the Florida Panthers? Would you consider them a dynasty if they won backto back cups? Is there anyone that can stop them at this point? Let us know in the comments down below. We are doing breakdowns on every single game from now right until the end of the NHL playoffs. You can check out our Edmonton game four breakdown here. So, make sure you turn on notifications and subscribe to the channel so that you don’t miss a thing.

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We break down game 5 of the Florida Panthers vs The Carolina Hurricanes and how each team tried to expose the other for the win. We also take a deeper dive into how Florida’s success can change the NHL.