{"id":554047,"date":"2026-04-16T20:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554047\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:13:13","slug":"florida-panthers-showed-their-championship-pedigree-in-oddest-of-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554047\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Panthers showed their championship pedigree in oddest of years"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT LAUDERDALE \u2014 They\u2019ll be back. No one doubts that. If it was an odd and unexpected season for the Florida Panthers, it was an equally odd first day of summer for a team that missed the playoffs.<\/p>\n

That started with Paul Maurice wearing khaki shorts and a breezy, blue shirt, as if to dress himself into a good mood \u2014 or at least try after a season when his two-time Stanley Cup champions admirably walked the gangplank.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight active fractures,\u2019\u2019 Maurice said at one point Thursday.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the defining statistic of their season. Eight broken players\u2019 bones still healing. There was something deeply defining in the manner the Panthers continually committed themselves, even as injuries piled up right from the first practice when, \u201cThe Big Man,\u201d as Maurice calls Aleksander Barkov, was lost for the season.<\/p>\n

But there was something equally defining in this first day off. No whining. No boo-hoo pessimism. No doubt what\u2019s coming next year, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather miss the playoffs than lose the finals,\u2019\u2019 Marchand said. \u201cTo go that far affects your next year as well. To go that deep, and you lose \u2014 at the end of the day, what\u2019s the difference between losing (in the final) and not making the playoffs?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one winner and everyone else is a loser.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a full talk-show topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be more disappointed with this year if we didn\u2019t have this group going into next year that we have,\u2019\u2019 Marchand said. \u201cWe\u2019ll still be on paper, one of, if not the best team in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marchand was initially hurt in December, fought his way through January, thought he was OK in February and then had to call it a season the first week of March. That\u2019s was the story of so many Panthers this year.\u00a0The flip side was the likes of Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett and Anton Lundell setting career highs for minutes played trying to cover for injured teammates.<\/p>\n

No doubt missing the playoffs allows them to rest their bodies and minds in a manner they haven\u2019t done the previous three summers.\u00a0Some already have rested enough, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d Barkov said when asked he was looking forward to playing for Finland in the World Championships.<\/p>\n

Several Panthers will play in the tournament, meaning their summer vacations won\u2019t be completely restful. The team is fine with that, too, even encouraging it as long as the players are fully healthy, general manager Bill Zito said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Zito on stage now. Everything changed for the Panthers went he came in the door nearly six years ago. He thinks outside the rink, like Tuesday, when he said everyone repeats the clich\u00e9 of \u201cTwo plus two equaling four.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you just say, \u2018Five minus one?\u2019 \u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Zito might have a top-10 draft pick, depending on how a few things break. Or he might not have one at all with it lost to Chicago. Regardless, his big decision is goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who is a free agent. Barkov spoke for the players, and fans, when saying, \u201cEveryone in South Florida wants him back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobrovsky also is 38 in September and had a career-low .877-save percentage this season.\u00a0 So the heavyweight question is if he can carry this team to another Stanley Cup in the way a goalie must at times. And, if not him, then who? Or maybe bring Bobrovsky and another goalie in?<\/p>\n

Somewhere in there is the five-minus-one answer Zito must find. Win or learn. That\u2019s the mantra this team adopted from Maurice. Zito was asked what they learned this messy season. He said he\u2019s thinking on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the answer, I haven\u2019t learned,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Maurice was asked something simpler: Was this a lost season?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will depend on how we handle it,\u2019\u2019 Maurice said.<\/p>\n

He noticed somewhere in March he disliked how the Panthers played. He understood why it happened with so many injured regulars and minor-league fill-ins. He also made a note to, \u201ctake care of that in training camp,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

The two-time champs will be healthy then. And hungry. This odd year will turn to motivational fuel by then, like water to wine. It was odd right to these first-day-of-summer\u2019s interviews, which weren\u2019t downcast or uncertain about the future in the manner of, say, the Miami Heat across town.<\/p>\n

Little went right this Panthers season. But it was easy to still see why it went so right the previous two years.\u00a0 Maybe this season\u2019s eulogy was best said by Detroit coach Todd McLellan after the Panthers won the season finale for both teams 8-1. He was furious about his team\u2019s effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth teams came in with nothing on the line, and you could see their championship pedigree,\u2019\u2019 McLellan said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m going to compliment the Panthers. That pedigree runs throughout their organization. They came and they played, and it meant something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until next year.<\/p>\n

\"FloridaFlorida Panthers forward Brad Marchand speaks during a news conference at the Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday. (Joe Cavaretta\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE \u2014 They\u2019ll be back. No one doubts that. If it was an odd and unexpected season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,1180,4,63,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-554047","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-latest-headlines","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116416218882712999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554047","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=554047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}