The good news is that the Panthers still have a lot of guys, and they know how to play under Maurice, who is starting his fourth season in Florida.
Of the 19 players on the ice Wednesday, 15 appeared in the Cup Final last season. That included goalie Sergei Bobrovsky; defensemen Aaron Ekblad, Gustav Forsling and Seth Jones; and forwards Sam Bennett, Anton Lundell, Brad Marchand, Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe. That’s still not too shabby.
Of the four who didn’t appear in the Cup Final last season, two have plenty of experience with the Panthers. Defenseman Uvis Balinskis played 76 games in the regular season and five in the playoffs last season. Forward Mackie Samoskevich played 72 games in the regular season and four in the playoffs.
The only newcomers were forward Luke Kunin and defenseman Jeff Petry.
“I just think we have a deep squad, and everyone knows the system and buys into the system, and that’s the key,” Forsling said.
Ekblad said that “bringing intensity to the system every night” is the challenge.
“It’s easier said than done, but it’s our job to bring it,” he said. “There’s a lot of veteran leadership in this room that understands how to bring it and when to bring it. Yeah, I think obviously there’s points in an 82-game season where you’re not going to have it or you’re going to have an injury or something where you can’t do everything possible, but you’re still trying to do as much as you can any given night.”
There is a misconception, at least on the outside.
“We don’t peak for the playoffs,” Maurice said. “That’s not what we’re trying to do. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite. You look at our last two Marches, they are uninspiring.”
The Panthers had a 1-5-1 slump in March in 2023-24. They went 4-8-1 from March 11 to April 6 last season.
“We’re just trying to play as hard as we can so that when we get to the playoffs, we have invested enough hard that you don’t want to let it slip away,” Maurice said. “The idea of timing it, it doesn’t work for us. We wouldn’t be able to do that, certainly now. None of these guys are going to be back for five months, so no sense waiting.”
There is nothing positive about playing without Barkov, Tkachuk and company, unless the Panthers can learn to win without them.
“The silver lining is, you potentially become bulletproof to injuries in the playoffs if you can figure out how to survive this now,” Maurice said. “That’s the only thing we get out of this, because we’re going to have to scratch and claw to make the playoffs, because the division is that good.”