How the Florida Panthers Made It to the Top of the NHL
How the Florida Panthers Made It to the Top of the NHL
There's a new No. 1 in the league rankings, and they've taken an exceptionally strange path to get there.
The Florida Panthers’ story has taken some really weird twists and turns these past few years — and that’s putting things mildly.
Midway through the 2020-21 season, I wrote about how that emerging Panthers team was shaping up to potentially win the franchise’s first playoff series in a quarter-century. Did it ultimately happen? No — they were ousted in the first round by the rival (and eventual Stanley Cup champion) Tampa Bay Lightning in 6 games. But it did the following year, when Florida advanced past the Washington Capitals to finally end the team’s long series-winning drought.
And yet, that season was also probably the most bitterly disappointing in franchise history. Despite earning the President’s Trophy for the NHL’s best regular-season record, and owning one of the league’s most prolific offensive attacks ever, the Panthers were swept out of the second round by the Lightning (who else?) in just about the most humiliating way possible. Their winning formula had been dismantled so thoroughly that Florida’s front office made dramatic offseason changes to turn the page on what was supposed to be the best era in team history.
Growing pains followed. The Panthers fell from first in the Eastern Conference to eighth, losing 77 net goals of differential in the process. Their reward was a first-round date with the top-seeded Boston Bruins, who had just broken the NHL’s all-time records for wins and points in a regular season. But despite falling down 3-1 in the series, Florida battled back to pull off one of the biggest upsets in postseason history, then marched all the way to the Finals before falling to the Vegas Golden Knights.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, the Panthers are now back on top of the East, passing the Bruins (who else?) in the standings over the past week. By the Elo power ratings, this is currently the best Florida Panthers team ever through the first 55 games of a season. And after Florida crushed the Lightning 9-2 on Saturday, it’s also the first Panthers team to ever rank No. 1 in the league in Elo at any point in the franchise’s 30-season history:
This might seem somewhat surprising, given the 2021-22 version’s place atop the NHL standings. But the Colorado Avalanche were nearly as dominant that year, while starting from a higher echelon in the league — they ranked No. 2 in the preseason, versus No. 8 for Florida — so the Avs remained atop the rankings for the majority of the year even as Florida won and won.
The Panthers’ other two banner seasons, their near-title runs in 1995-96 and 2022-23, only ever brought Florida as high as No. 6 on the eve of the Final in both years, because each playoff march was relatively unexpected. Scott Mellanby’s rat-killers of 1996 were just 12th in Elo going into the postseason but knocked off teams ranked 6th (Boston), 2nd (Philadelphia) and 4th (Pittsburgh); Matthew Tkachuk and Co., meanwhile, ranked 11th ahead of the 2023 playoffs and beat teams ranked 1st (Boston), 5th (Toronto) and 4th (Carolina).
So that leaves 2023-24 as the very first Panthers team to rate as the best in hockey, at least according to the power ratings. And one of the other strange things is just how they got here. It’s not purely driven by the remnants of 2021-22’s President’s Trophy squad, nor is it newcomers or carry-overs from the 2022-23 Finals team. It’s an odd and unpredictable mix of the three different mini-eras that were packed into a short period of franchise history.
While many of the Panthers’ best players now were also with the club during its initial breakout a few years ago — some go as far back as Sasha Barkov (joined in 2013-14), Aaron Ekblad (2014-15) or the enigmatic Sergei Bobrovsky (2019-20) — a number of the top producers from 2021-22’s high-powered roster, such as Jonathan Huberdeau, Anthony Duclair, MacKenzie Weegar, Mason Marchment and Radko Gudas, are long gone now. And the best players of the 2022-23 Panthers, Tkachuk and Brandon Montour, are both on pace for less production — considerably less, in the case of Montour — this season.1
Instead, Florida’s 2023-24 surge has been driven by unlikely stars like Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe and Gustav Forsling. All are on pace for career-high Adjusted GAR marks, with Reinhart in particular shattering his previous career norms. Posting 58 adjusted goals, Reinhart is tracking for the second-most potent sniping performance in the league this season, trailing only the otherworldly Auston Matthews. And perhaps most impressive of all, he has done it while seldom playing at even strength with Tkachuk, the team’s assist leader.2
It’s safe to say that nobody was expecting Reinhart to be sitting in the player rankings next to David Pastrňák and Connor McDavid, but his career year is helping to power the Panthers’ surprising climb back up the league rankings — along with a stingy defense and another “up” year in the up-and-down career of Bobrovsky.
The next step for Florida is another trip through the East and a chance to avenge last year’s Finals defeat. That part will be difficult in a crowded field; while the Panthers are the Cup favorites (as of Feb. 18), they’re also one of no fewer than 11 teams with at least a 4.5% championship probability as we enter the regular season’s stretch run.
Making Florida an even riskier pick, it must be said that this team only ever seems to succeed in the playoffs when nothing is expected of them — and this year, that won’t be true. But maybe the weirdest chapter the Panthers could write in their strange franchise history is a playoff run that’s actually predictable and (dare we say?) boring, one where a team that’s finally the best in hockey simply takes care of its business like it’s supposed to.
Filed under: NHL
Tkachuk is still tracking for 30 adjusted goals and 95 adjusted points, but that’s down from 38 and 103 last season. Montour missed early time recovering from offseason shoulder surgery and hasn’t been the same since; he isn’t remotely close to matching last year’s output.
They do play together more on the power play, where Reinhart has 22 of his 39 goals and Tkachuk has 21 of his 44 assists.