{"id":542651,"date":"2026-04-05T20:29:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T20:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/542651\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T20:29:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T20:29:25","slug":"florida-officially-eliminated-from-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/542651\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida officially eliminated from playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Florida <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nhl\/florida-panthers\/panthers-news-paul-maurice-florida-energy-three-peat-quest\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Panthers were on top of the NHL<\/a> for the past two seasons, but like they say, all good things must come to an end at some point. That&#8217;s what happened to them before the season even ended, as the Panthers <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PuckReportNHL\/status\/2040561527246192860\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">have been officially eliminated<\/a> from the playoffs after losing 9-4 to the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n<p>It will be the first time since 2022 that somebody else from the Eastern Conference will be represented in the Stanley Cup Final. For the first time since 2023, someone else will also be hosting the trophy.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that they&#8217;re not feeling the best about being eliminated, but as long as they&#8217;re together as a group, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/story\/_\/id\/48399000\/injury-plagued-florida-eliminated-playoff-contention\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">nothing else matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously, no one&#8217;s happy about the situation. But it&#8217;s about really just sticking together as a team and going through this as a team. We&#8217;re all sticking together. It&#8217;s not fun sometimes. But we&#8217;re just trying to make the best of it,\u201d forward Sam Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>The Panthers&#8217; regression started before the season even started, when Aleksander Barkow tore his ACL and MCL to start training camp. <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nhl\/florida-panthers\/panthers-news-florida-huge-seth-jones-boost-26-game-absence\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seth Jones broke his collarbone<\/a> during the season and missed 26 games. Just last month, Brad Marchand was shut down for the season.<\/p>\n<p>Not to mention, Jonah Gadjovich, Tomas Nosek, Dmitry Kulikov and Matthew Tkachuk have all missed extended time this season. In the end, they did not have the recipe for success, and staying healthy is at the top.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we all know \u2026 how good this hockey team is. We know how good we&#8217;re going to be when we have everyone healthy and everyone back. So there&#8217;s obviously a ton of excitement, I think, in anticipation for next year,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>The team should have a good reason to believe they&#8217;ll be back at the top next season, and the hope is that they can be at full strength.<\/p>\n<p>The Florida Panthers were on top of the NHL for the past two seasons, but like they say, all good things must come to an end at some point.  That&#8217;s what happened to them before the season even ended, as the Panthers have been officially eliminated from the playoffs after losing 9-4 to the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Panthers were on top of the NHL for the past two seasons, but like they say,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-542651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}