Why have the Panthers gone from Presidents' Trophy to playoff outsider?

Last season, the Florida Panthers bulldozed through their competition, winning a franchise-record 58 games and the Presidents’ Trophy.

That is far from the case this season. After losing in overtime to the Maple Leafs on Tuesday, the 21-20-5 Panthers are on pace for 84 points and in danger of becoming the first reigning Presidents’ Trophy winner to miss the playoffs since the 2014-15 Boston Bruins.

The loss to the Maple Leafs was the Panthers’ fifth failed attempt at extending a winning streak to three games. They are one of three teams without a three-game winning streak this season, along with the terrible Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets. That is not company you want to keep.

The Panthers made big changes following their second-round loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, most notably trading Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar to the Calgary Flames for Matthew Tkachuk. They also chose not to bring back Jack Adams Award finalist Andrew Brunette as coach and hired Paul Maurice, who resigned from the Winnipeg Jets in December 2021.

Tkachuk has lived up to his superstar billing with 56 points in 43 games — a 103-point pace. But that production has not helped a middle-of-the-pack offence that is scoring nearly one fewer goal per game than it did last season. (Aleksander Barkov, a high-level play-driver, missing 10 games cannot be overlooked, either.)

“Our analytics are way better than our record,” Maurice told reporters Tuesday. “I think in Winnipeg, my analytics were way worse than the record, so I can’t use that as an argument here. I was always saying, ‘Analytics don’t matter.’ Now I’m saying, ‘Hey, look at the analytics!’”

Maurice has a point, though. The Panthers’ 55.1 xGF% at even strength ranks near the top of the NHL. The only teams ahead of them are the powerhouse Carolina Hurricanes (59.3 xGF%) and league-leading Bruins (56.2 xGF%).

Regression was expected after the Panthers scored at an historic rate in 2021-22. They became the first team in the salary cap era (since 2005-06) to average at least four goals per game (4.11) and the first in any era since the 1995-96 Pittsburgh Penguins (4.41), who had Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr at the height of their powers.

That drop-off has led to fewer comeback wins. The Panthers were never out of a game last season, posting a 9-18-1 record when trailing by multiple goals. They are 0-19-1 this season when facing a multi-goal deficit. The Panthers are also the lone team without a win when trailing after the first or second periods -- 0-11-1 when trailing after the first period and 0-15-1 when trailing after the second.

Part of what made the Panthers so dangerous last season was their rush game. Florida was tied for second with 603 rush scoring chances (7.35 per game) and third with 76 rush goals (0.93 per game) in all situations, respectively. This season, the Panthers are seventh with 293 rush chances (6.37 per game) and tied for 14th with 28 rush goals (0.61 per game). Through 46 games, the Panthers have scored 22 fewer goals off the rush than they had at this point a year ago.

“Our team’s different than it was last year,” Maurice said. “We have different personnel, and we’ve got to learn to adapt to play a different kind of game. We still put an awful lot of pucks at the net. We get lots of great chances to score. (But) we’re not (scoring) four or five goals early in the game or having big comebacks. We’ve got to learn how to grind.”

As usual, goaltending has also played a role in the Panthers’ predicament. Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight have allowed a combined 20.5 goals above expected — around 17 more than they had given up at this stage last season.

If those aspects of the Panthers’ game bounce back down the stretch, then perhaps they can sneak into the playoffs. But time is not on their side.

All stats from Sportlogiq