The Panthers Need Their Luck Back

Florida is down 2-0 in the Stanley Cup Final, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

It’s been a rough start to the Stanley Cup Final for the Florida Panthers. Falling into a 2-0 hole against the Vegas Golden Knights, Florida has been outscored 12-4, allowing at least 5 goals each game after yielding that many only twice in their preceding 16 playoff games. They’ve been tagged for 130 penalty minutes as well — already the 27th-most by a team in Finals history, through just 2 games — which in turn led to 4 power-play goals by the Knights and coincided with star winger Matthew Tkachuk getting ejected at the ends of both games.

There’s a line in hockey between controlled aggression and undisciplined foolishness, and the Panthers have fallen on the wrong side in both games of the Final so far. Add in defensive lapses and leaky goaltending that got the previously red-hot Sergei Bobrovsky yanked from Game 2, and it’s no wonder that Florida is staring at an 84% chance of losing the series to Vegas.

But as lopsided as the Final’s first couple of games have been, maybe the biggest factor the Panthers need as they head back home for Game 3 is a luck correction.

Florida got to where it is now by pulling a historic series of upsets, and playing a physical style that didn’t drive a lot of possession — through the Eastern Conference final, they had just 46% of the Corsi events, 47% of the scoring chances and 45% of the expected goals with the score close — but created quality chances via aggressive forechecking and an opportunistic mentality overall. They also relied on Bobrovsky to bail their defense out when it allowed chances, both of which happened a lot in the lead-up to the Cup Final.

Amazingly, the Panthers have actually improved their possession numbers through 2 games against Vegas. They’re up to 53% of the Corsi events and 49% of the scoring chances and expected goals. Filtering out all of the rampant penalties, Florida has also been holding its own at 5-on-5 with a Vegas team that specializes in even-strength play. (These numbers aren’t distorted by the lopsided margins, either — remember, they’re all with the score close.) In terms of the underlying “fundamentals”, you could make the case that Florida’s performance has not really fallen off the way we might expect from a team decisively down 2-0.

Where the Panthers have gone ice-cold in the Final, however, is in the areas that were boosting them the most during their postseason run though the East. Their shooting percentage with the score close has been cut in half, and their save percentage has been dreadful — with a particular drop-off coming on legitimate scoring chances, which Bobrovsky had been turning aside with aplomb until the Final.

There’s an advanced-ish stat called PDO, which tries to quantify luck by simply adding a team’s shooting and save percentages; anything above 1.000 generally means a team’s luck has been running hot, while anything below means their luck has been cold. During their march to the Final, the Panthers had a close-score PDO¹ of 1.031, which is very high (though, oddly, it ranked behind Vegas’ 1.055 mark). In the Final itself, Florida’s PDO has fallen to .895, which is much worse than any team has in the playoffs overall this year.

In other words, the difference between the Panthers’ core stats from the Eastern Conference playoffs to the Finals has been minimal. But the difference in their luck has been massive! As a result, they’re down 2-0 and in huge danger of letting the franchise’s second Stanley Cup Final appearance slip away again in landslide fashion.

Don’t get the wrong idea: Florida’s luck might be due for a correction, but not an overcorrection. The out-of-nowhere Bobrovsky hot streak they rode to the doorstep of a championship was its own form of very good luck — and if that has truly run out, the Panthers are every bit the underdog they seemed on paper before the Cup Final began. But with things shifting back to South Florida for Game 3, a dose of better luck might be all it takes to help the Cats claw their way back into this series.

Filed under: NHL

1. Across all strengths.