FORT LAUDERDALE — There has been a lot of dirt tossed on the Florida Panthers lately.
Do not think Paul Maurice and his team has not noticed.
“Like, everybody loves this,” Maurice said. “We’re struggling. And I get it. I would be too if I were on the outside looking in. Good on ‘em. That can be something we can use, right? For sure. For sure.’’
The Panthers, of course, are off to a rough start.
The two-time defending champions currently sit in last place in the Eastern Conference at 12-12-1 after their first 25 games of the season, a far cry from where many thought they would be this late in the season.
Although there is no panic in the Panthers just yet, there certainly is some concern over the way things have been going.
Florida comes into Thursday’s game with the Nashville Predators having lost four of five — and have a four-game home losing streak.
The only win during this run came last Monday night in Nashville when the Panthers throttled the Predators 8-3.
Nashville has played much better since then, winning three of its next four.
After Tuesday’s 4-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Sam Reinhart and Sergei Bobrovsky spoke of believing the players and coaches in that room will pull Florida out of the funk.
The day after, Niko Mikkola and Anton Lundell echoed some of those sentiments adding their team is not playing all that badly, but they certainly not well enough to win.
“We are right there, we’re just not getting the points we want,” said Lundell, who worked to get Reinhart the puck for Florida’s lone goal on Tuesday. “There are a lot of good things in our game, but we have things we need to clean up. We realize every team in the league wants to beat us. The NHL is the best league in the world, we respect that. Less can be more sometimes, and we can be smarter on the ice.”
Added Mikkola: “We’re lacking in some things right now. With a few improvements, we should be fine. Right now, we’re making some mistakes and it ends up in our net. We’re right there, but playing a little behind.”
Maurice knows what many are thinking, that things have looked bad for the Panthers in the past and the team found a way to make it all work.
In his first season, the Panthers were eight points out of the playoffs on Jan. 1, yet the team rallied and ended up going all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.
Florida currently sits six points out of the wild card and five out of third in the Atlantic.
The biggest battle the Panthers are contending with are injuries which have proven, thus far, tough to overcome.
The Panthers are missing not only elite talents such as Sasha Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, but important supporting players Dmitry Kulikov, Eetu Luostarinen, Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich, and Cole Schwindt.
The depth of the Panthers is being put to the test.
“We have been through situations where we had to crawl back from nine [points out],” said Maurice, whose 2022-23 team had 28 points through its first 25 games. “But that’s with a healthy lineup. That’s hard to do.”
On Wednesday, Maurice said he uses a bit of restraint when talking about his team to the media and says their latest run of it is not due to fatigue as many point to, but tight play.
Things are not going right these days. The bad snowballs more than good does.
But Maurice and his team are working on getting right even if the players in the lineup are a little different than many are used to seeing, even if their style of play has to reflect that.
“You have to be careful how hard you squeeze a team that has a bunch of guys out with a bunch of new guys trying their butts off,” Maurice said. “We deal with our issues and go through them pretty tight. But you have to come back to work the next day.
“We need to win that game [Thursday], right? We have to have that hope and excitement, and enthusiasm that we need more from this group than we would need from the group last year. We just need that energy. We have to find a way to get more of it.”
ON DECK: GAME No. 26
NASHVILLE PREDATORS at FLORIDA PANTHERS
