Watching the Florida Panthers has long been a painful process.
Just when you think things are finally looking up, there’s another long, playoff-less stretch of fresh hockey hell.
In addition to that, defending the Florida Panthers’ well-documented attendance woes to other hockey fans living in ‘traditional’ markets can sometimes seem like a full-time job, but it’s getting harder to convince even the most forgiving of Panthers critics, myself included.
The Panthers were at times both good and bad in last night’s shootout-road loss against the Edmonton Oilers. Most jarringly, of course, was Connor McDavid’s two last minute goals.
He tied the game at two with 22 seconds left in the second period, then tied it again with eight seconds remaining in the third.
The shootout highlighted what I think is the main problem with the Florida Panthers. The main problem, I think, isn’t that the Panthers aren’t good, they are.
The problem is that although they’re ‘pretty good,’ they’re not good enough to be considered ‘better than’ over half of the teams in the National Hockey League.
The ‘middle’ team – the one that has 15 teams better than and 15 teams worse than – is the 16th ranked team. The Florida Panthers are much more often than not out of the playoffs, and unfortunately, this season is not proving to be an exception.
Jonathan Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov are arguably the best two players on the Florida Panthers, but they were stoned in the shootout by longtime Cats’ nemesis Cam Talbot.
The Oilers also put their best two players up. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and McDavid were each successful against goaltender James Reimer. When you stack up our marquee players against theirs, as proud as we are of them, we simply end up lacking.
Rookie Henrik Borgstrom netted what should’ve been the game winner with his fourth marker of the campaign with six minutes remaining in regulation. Bogdan Kiselevich and Mike Hoffman earned the helpers on the play.
With under a minute left in the second period, Connor McDavid (25) buried the puck literally one second after a power play ended to tie the contest at two.
Darnell Nurse and Leon Draisaitl assisted on the play. Denis Malgin (5) had given the Cats the lead at the four-minute mark of the middle frame, with an unassisted goal.
It started off with a Frank Vatrano (12) marker at the nine-minute mark of the first, with Kiselevich assisting on the play. Nurse (6) answered just 26 seconds later to tie it up for Edmonton.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction for these Panthers. By-and-large, they play to their level of competition, whatever that may be.
More often than not, unfortunately, they usually come up just short, and that was the case on Thursday night.
The Florida Panthers need to find something that works, and it’s becoming ever clearer that they should probably consider firing coach Bob Boughner.
He is by no means the only problem facing the Cats, but it would show that the ownership group is at the very least serious about addressing the continuing issue.
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