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<\/p>\nTORONTO \u2014 The Florida Panthers have had a tight grip on Lord Stanley\u2019s mug for two years but will now have to hand it over after missing the postseason.<\/p>\n
So I had the idea to venture into the visitors\u2019 dressing room Saturday at Scotiabank Arena and ask some of the Panthers players who they might pick to win this year. The only problem is that so many of the regulars who actually won those two Cups with Florida are on the shelf right now. Still, through a dressing room full of AHL call-ups, I did bump into a few Cup champs who humored me.<\/p>\n
After all, NHLers are hockey fans at heart, too. They\u2019ll be watching the Stanley Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n
Although in the moment, a season from hell with ridiculous injuries still stings.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it sucks with the injuries, being out of the playoffs this year,\u201d forward Eetu Luostarinen said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good teams, a lot of good teams in the West. I think Colorado and maybe Minnesota have a really good chance to go all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rugged winger A.J. Greer, who has a career-high 16 goals this season, didn\u2019t hesitate in his Stanley Cup pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve got to go with Colorado,\u201d Greer said, sitting back in his stall as he laid out his case. \u201cLike, a team that has a little bit of everything. They\u2019ve got snarl. I was in that organization. The way that they do things, the way they run things, the coach, the competitiveness in that locker room \u2026 and, of course, they added Naz (Kadri). Naz is a really good friend of mine. I know how bad he wants to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to go with them. They\u2019ve got some really good players, especially guys in their depth spots like Parker Kelly and all those guys. That\u2019s what you need to win a championship. Yeah, that would be my pick.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
OK then, A.J. Greer, future NHL broadcaster. But as he was describing the Avalanche and their make-up, I couldn\u2019t help but think he had just described the 2024 and 2025 Panthers championship teams.<\/p>\n
Two-time Cup champion netminder Sergei Bobrovsky appreciated my query and was very polite in his answer, but no, he wasn\u2019t going to identify a 2026 Cup champion for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s going to be a battle,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the great thing about the league, that you never know who is going to be the winner. The teams are so competitive and so tight. Yeah, it\u2019s going to be interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
You may think that was a cop-out answer, but having dealt with Bob over the years, I don\u2019t think it was. I think he means it when he says it\u2019s wide open. He\u2019s lived it. Consider that his Panthers were the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference when they stormed to the Cup Final in 2023, which included a seven-game opening-round series win over the 65-win Boston Bruins, before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. Consider that Bobrovsky was also in the net when the No. 8-seeded Columbus Blue Jackets stunningly swept the 62-win Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019.<\/p>\n
So it makes sense that it could be any of the 16 teams in his mind.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, who saw me coming from a mile away and gave me a \u201cnice try\u201d look as I started asking the question.<\/p>\n
Still, because he\u2019s the most thoughtful talker among head coaches in the NHL, he did still deliver in a manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, you know, I\u2019m not doing that,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cBut I will tell you, for me, there are five clear teams and any one of them can win. And then I would say, we never had home-ice advantage last year in any of our four rounds. So, my five (teams) probably aren\u2019t winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in terms of style of play and then consistency of that style of play over the course of the year, that idea that you have to time it, you\u2019ve got to build to the playoffs. We\u2019ve been horrible in March in each of the last two years because we were just waiting for the playoffs. That\u2019s how I felt. But in terms of Day 1 to 82-game consistency, I would value that more: who\u2019s been good the longest. Because they know their game.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche have been the best team in the NHL all season. But will that hold up in the postseason? (Justin Berl \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Colleague Luke Fox of Sportsnet followed up, trying to get Maurice to identify those five teams, and he said no thanks, joking that the No. 6 team on that list would have fodder all year long next season to beat the Panthers. He\u2019s not providing that ammunition.<\/p>\n
I would venture to guess that how he described 82-game consistency in their respective games, he was pointing to the Avalanche, the Dallas Stars, the Minnesota Wild, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Lightning.<\/p>\n
But Maurice also added that injuries will be huge, too. And that\u2019s impossible to predict.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played four straight months of playoff hockey (between the \u201924 and \u201925 Cup runs) without losing a defenseman,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cWe can\u2019t keep a guy (healthy) in practice this year. So that part you don\u2019t control. So the answer is nobody knows who\u2019s winning the thing. Nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are bound to be upsets, of course. That\u2019s the reality of the salary cap ecosystem in the NHL. I feel like no one is talking about the Utah Mammoth. There is absolutely a world in which they could make their way through the Pacific Division in a wild-card cross-over. I mean, they would have been vying for first place in the Pacific if they were actually in that division.<\/p>\n
One thing I keep asking myself over the past week, though: Will Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers just turn on the switch and go into their usual playoff beast mode? I get the question marks. They\u2019re real. But I can\u2019t help but think they might just have another deep run in them.<\/p>\n
The Montreal Canadiens have beaten the Hurricanes and Lightning twice each over the past month. The Habs are the youngest team in the league but score at will and have got goaltending now. Watch out for them.<\/p>\n
But you know the team that could really surprise and do damage? The Ottawa Senators. The underlying numbers in the first half of the season suggested that they were a better team than their record. Now they\u2019re getting saves. Head coach Travis Green and his staff have done an outstanding job getting that team in. They can beat anyone.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see who comes out of the East. Carolina is the top seed and deserves to be. The Canes have been the most consistent team all year. But will the goaltending hold up? The Buffalo Sabres being back in the playoff party after 14 years<\/a> is the best story in the NHL<\/a>, and their balanced attack and talented blue line show a team that can go deep, for sure. That would be a lot of fun. The NHL is a better place with the Sabres in the playoffs.<\/p>\n All these teams in the East need to take advantage of a year without Florida, because the Panthers will be healthy and back in the mix next season. Greer and Luostarinen picking Colorado to win the Cup is hardly surprising. The Avs are the first-place team in the league. If they can make tidy work of their wild-card opponent in Round 1 and have Dallas and Minnesota beat the heck out of each other over seven games, it\u2019s never looked this good for the Avs to return to the Cup Final for the first time in four years.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t give you my Stanley Cup final pick just yet. I want to wait to see the official first-round matchups. But I\u2019ll find it hard not to have Colorado coming out of the West, even though that\u2019s chalk.<\/p>\n Not surprising that no one in the Panthers locker room wanted to pick the bitter rival Lightning for the Cup. Despite some recent losses, notably to Buffalo and Montreal, the veteran Lightning have championship DNA and are still the best bet to come out of the East, as per our stats guru Dom Luszczyszyn and his latest forecasting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ah, but it\u2019s the Stanley Cup playoffs, where chaos is king.<\/p>\n The best part of the year is around the corner, hockey fans. Can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 The Florida Panthers have had a tight grip on Lord Stanley\u2019s mug for two years but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[144,62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-551739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-colorado-avalanche","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-panthers","11":"tag-floridapanthers","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116396962745384770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551739","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=551739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}