The Florida Panthers Got Tough Enough to Win the Cup
The Florida Panthers Got Tough Enough to Win the Cup
It's easy to be skeptical about old-school grit, but the success of Florida's transformation is undeniable.
When the Florida Panthers were unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by the rival Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022, it marked a bitter end to what had otherwise been the most remarkable season in franchise history to that point. The Panthers had won the President’s Trophy — given to the team with the NHL’s best regular-season record (cursed as that title may be) — and their high-flying offense had the 19th-most goals per game in league history, relative to average. But in the end, they mustered just three total goals in their four-game playoff defeat, getting shut out in the finale.
Many teams still would have run it back with the same group and game plan, building on their recent success. But GM Bill Zito’s Panthers aren’t a typical team. Rather than doubling down on their offense-first philosophy, Florida made a series of moves to get tougher, more rugged and more defensive for the playoffs. All of that paid off in Monday’s Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, as the Panthers won the first championship in franchise history — and they did it using all of the lessons they learned over the past few years.
Florida was far from the first high-scoring hockey team to vow a commitment to toughness and grit after seeing its offense shut down in the playoffs. (The Toronto Maple Leafs have made this the central principle of their offseason for years now.) Sometimes it works: The mid-’90s Detroit Red Wings were swept in the 1995 Final and fell just short in 1996 against a violent Colorado Avalanche team, but moves for hard-nosed players like Brendan Shanahan put them over the top.
Just as often, though, it tends to strike us stat-types as the old-school default response to anything involving modern hockey: Just get tougher! And paradoxically, that usually involves getting worse, losing the type of skill that is paramount in today’s era of deep offensive talent.
For a while, it looked like the Panthers had fallen into that trap. 2022’s offseason carousel saw Florida wave goodbye to leading scorer Jonathan Huberdeau, two-way defenseman MacKenzie Weegar and interim coach Andrew Brunette, bringing in Matthew Tkachuk to be the on-ice centerpiece and Paul Maurice to lead the effort behind the bench. And the team immediately got a lot worse, falling off by 16 wins and nearly a full goal per game (0.94) of scoring differential. Yes, they were tougher — but it seemed fair to ask, at what cost?
But then, something completely unexpected happened: They won. And they kept winning.
Given little chance to unseat the record-breaking Boston Bruins in the first round past year, Florida overcame a 3-1 deficit to pull off arguably the greatest upset in postseason history. They carried that momentum all the way to the Final before coming up short against the Vegas Golden Knights. And, as it turns out, that was only the beginning.
This season, Florida was no underdog. In February, they made it to No. 1 in my Elo ratings for the first time in franchise history. They spent much of the playoffs as the league’s best team, and the favorite to win the Cup. And they truly did do it by revamping their formula and becoming tougher, with the help of the mercurial Sergei Bobrovsky in net.
In 2021-22, the Panthers were +1.00 goals per game above league average on offense, but just +0.14 relative to average on defense. And if you index the total penalty minutes (for and against) in Florida’s games — a proxy for how rough-and-tumble of a style a team plays with — the Panthers had an index of 118, meaning they were 18 percent “tougher” than average. Compare that to 2023-24, when Florida was much better on defense (+0.67) than on offense (+0.16) and far tougher, leading the league with a 145 PIM index.
Both Florida’s defense and toughness ranked among the best of any Stanley Cup winner since the end of the Original Six era in 1968:
The ultimate test of both factors came, surprisingly, in the Stanley Cup Final.
Once poised to potentially sweep the Edmonton Oilers, the Panthers instead seemed to be collapsing in slow motion, as the Oilers stormed back in historic fashion to tie the series 3-3 and force a Game 7. The mental toughness required to regroup after flying 2,541 miles to play one more game — this time an elimination game — was monumental.
And then, once they were on the ice for Game 7, the Panthers needed Bobrovsky and his defense to shine — they allowed just 1 goal on 24 shots. Along the way, they outhit Edmonton 30-19 and held Conn Smythe Trophy winner Connor McDavid pointless with just 2 shots in Game 7. A less-focused team could have allowed the momentum of the collapse to consume them, but Florida survived on the strength of the formula change that defined their past few seasons.
Sometimes, the mantra of getting tougher is just a knee-jerk response to losing. But sometimes, it proves to be a key ingredient in making a good team great, and that was the lesson of Florida’s rise to the top of the NHL.
Filed under: NHL
Your write-up is spot on and yet another proof point for Bill James' "Whirlpool Principle" (or "The Law of Competitive Balance") - which I have previously mentioned. That is, winning teams too often are paralyzed by their success and fail to incrementally make changes and get better as Florida did. Instead, many stay the same and very quickly find themselves pulled to a common level of mediocrity as less successful teams do make changes and improve.
Kudos to Bill Zito for resisting the urge to be complacent.
Of course, the principle also applies to coaches and this series is perhaps a cautionary tale for Paul Maurice. You need to keep evolving and adjusting in the postseason and within each series, not just rolling out the same strategy and assuming you can win one in four because you have won a bunch and history suggests it is on your side. The other side is adjusting to you, so nothing stays the same.
Florida didn't just lose three straight, they got beaten soundly. After each loss, stoically telling everyone you're not making any changes and feel no pressure or urgency ultimately worked tonight...perhaps not so much down the road. The situation in front of him screamed for changes.
Again, it's easy to embrace the status quo and do nothing. Ride it out and play not to lose - few will criticize you. Making changes takes real courage when the stakes are high. However, there comes a time when you as a leader need to assess the situation and emotional state of your team and dial up the emotion and urgency a bit.
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but I never got the feeling Maurice was doing that. He seemed to be treading water until the next game hoping for reversion to the mean. Again, it eventually worked out - but, is best viewed in my opinion as a fortunate teaching moment.
Last, I find it ironic if my counting is correct that the geographical region least associated with ice hockey - Florida - has four Cups in 20 years, while the region whose entire heart and soul is buried in the sport - Canada - is 30 plus years and counting. Not fair.