Wherever they finish in standings, the Panthers know ‘there's no weak link' in playoffs

Miami Herald

07-04-2025

The Florida Panthers still have a remotely outside chance of winning the Atlantic Division for a second consecutive season and having home-ice advantage for at least the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
They also have a chance of slipping outside of the top three in the division, entering the playoffs as a wild card team and opening potentially every postseason series on the road.
Anything is possible as the Panthers enter their final five-game stretch of the regular season almost limping to the finish. Florida (44-29-4, 92 points) enters its home game Tuesday against the division-leading Toronto Maple Leafs (47-25-4, 98 points) six points out of first place and having lost five consecutive games for the first time since Feb. 26-March 7, 2019, when the Panthers dropped six consecutive games.
But the Panthers aren't particularly concerned about where they end up in the standings. They care that they already have a playoff spot secured and have the chance to defend their Stanley Cup championship. They showed two years ago that anything is possible. In 2023, they went from the final team to get into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference to going all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. They built on that experience last year and won it all.
So whoever Florida ends up playing and whatever the scenario is, the Panthers are going to make sure they're ready for it.
'I wouldn't say it matters where we end up,' rookie forward Mackie Samoskevich said. 'You've got to beat everybody if you're going to win it all. I think it's just not opening up our game, staying tight and working on our forecheck. That's what works in the playoffs.'
If the season ended today, the Panthers would face their in-state rival Tampa Bay Lightning in the best-of-7 opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, with the series starting in Tampa because the Lightning (44-26-6, 94 points) are in second place in the division and Florida is third.
However, the Ottawa Senators (42-29-6, 90 points) are just two points behind Florida for third place in the division. If the Senators were to jump the Panthers before the season ends, then Florida would drop to the top wild card spot. That would have Florida opening the playoffs against Toronto.
Regardless of how it shakes out, the winners of the playoff series featuring Atlantic Division teams would face each other in the second round.
'I think the math says the path is you're gonna probably have to hit an Ontario team and a Florida team at some point,' Panthers coach Paul Maurice said last month about how the standings could shake out. 'We never talk about that and never think like that. There's no advantage. You're not winning [the Stanley Cup] without beating four great teams. There's no weak link.'
So as the Panthers prepare for whoever they will end up playing when the playoffs begin in less than two weeks, they're doing what they can internally to set themselves up for success.
Chief among that is getting the roster back to as close to full strength as possible.
Florida has been without star winger Matthew Tkachuk since the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in mid-February as well as defensemen Aaron Ekblad (suspension) and Dmitry Kulikov (upper-body) since mid-March. Captain and top-line center Aleksander Barkov and fourth-line center Nico Sturm each has missed the past three games as well with upper-body injuries. And for good measure, Maurice opted to have three more key players — forwards Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart along with defenseman Gustav Forsling — sit out Sunday's 2-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings to give them a chance to rest.
'We've got to get our hockey team healthy,' Maurice said.
Maurice has indicated that outside of potentially Tkachuk, who is on long-term injured reserve, everyone should be back for the start of the playoffs except for Ekblad, whose suspension will keep him out until Game 3 of the first round.
'Injuries happen throughout the playoffs,' Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues said. 'We might get some guys back, and then we might lose some guys, right? I think if you're looking forward to having a full lineup or waiting for that to happen, it's gonna bite you a little bit. Every game, we're going out there to win, no matter who's in our lineup and who we've got. When we're healthy, we're obviously going to be a dangerous group, but I don't think anyone's kind of waiting on that because we'll be waiting a long time. We're going to go with the group that's healthy, and if we do get healthy at one point, then we'll just have a dangerous group.'
The final stretch
After its game against Toronto on Tuesday (7 p.m., ESPN), Florida's final homestand includes games against the Red Wings on Thursday (7 p.m., Scripps), Buffalo Sabres on Saturday (6 p.m., Scripps) and New York Rangers on Monday (7 p.m., Scripps) before closing the regular season at Tampa Bay on April 15 (7 p.m., Scripps).