NHL
Stanley
Cup Final
The true hallmark of sports greatness lies in the wake of destruction, the aftermath from the other side. It’s the feeling of smallness next to a giant — in this case, the Florida Panthers, a team nearing perfection with a potential dynasty on the horizon.
The Tampa Bay Lightning? They weren’t actually elite. The Toronto Maple Leafs? They weren’t actually different. The Carolina Hurricanes? They didn’t actually belong.
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There’s a relative morsel of truth in all those statements (some more than others), but only relative to the Panthers. In the grand scope of the conference, these were the second-, third- and fourth-best teams in the East, an East that at the outset of the playoffs appeared incredibly tight at the top. That is, until Florida showed just how large that gap really is. The three other contenders from the East just couldn’t stack up to the sheer ferocity of the actual best. The Lightning were elite, the Leafs were different, the Hurricanes did belong; the Panthers were just better.
There’s no shame in any of that. The Panthers have proven to be extremely good over the past three years. But if the goal is the Stanley Cup, the relative truth is what matters.
To be the best you have to beat the best, and the Panthers rarely made it feel like that was a possibility. At the closest — down 2-0 against Toronto and 3-1 in Game 3 — the Panthers mostly felt like the horror villain playing dead with 30 minutes still left in the movie. The Panthers are the NHL’s boogeyman.
The Panthers weren’t just better — they were a lot better. What started out as three near coin-flip series (partially because Florida was the road team in each one) turned into anything but as the Panthers left absolutely no doubt about who the best team was in each series. Even in the closest one, the Panthers put an imposing stamp on the final game that made it clear who the boss was.
In a series that doesn’t feel close, it’s easy to blame the losing side, and I’m not here to excuse them. But given the path of destruction, there should be significantly more credit given to the winning side for imposing its will so decisively over some of the league’s best teams. The Panthers are playing at a level rarely seen in this sport.
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Florida is an absolutely demoralizing force, a team that at its best can make an opponent look and feel utterly helpless at the flip of a switch. And the Lightning, Leafs and Hurricanes sure looked the part at points during their series. It’s less about what they couldn’t do to stop the Panthers and more about how unstoppable the Panthers feel. Florida has multiple four-goal wins (or more) in each series so far, an astounding feat given how competitive the playoffs usually are. Blowouts aren’t uncommon, but for Florida to have two in each series is a testament to the team’s strength. When the Panthers smell blood, they feast.
The Panthers are a different beast, and the proof lies in the pure dejection felt by three opposing fan bases left with very few answers on how to solve this monster.
Usually, there’s a weakness that can be exploited. That’s the primary function of the salary cap and what drives parity. Somewhere on the team’s roster, somewhere in the team’s style, sacrifices have to be made. That isn’t the case here, a product of the best salary-cap efficiency in the league (with a splash of taking advantage of the LTIR system, of course).
Picture in your head the perfect hockey team, the sport’s platonic ideal. What does it look like?
It’s a team with Hall of Fame-worthy stars supplemented by exceptional depth throughout the lineup. It’s a team that can create elite offense one way and suppress it the other way. It’s a team that mixes dynamic skill with tenacious snarl — talented, but tough. It’s a team that can rush the puck up ice with speed or dump it in and forecheck teams into oblivion. It’s a team that emphasizes possession, but can deliver a blistering counterattack. It’s a team that has size on the back end, but also mobility. It’s a team that can play hockey any way you ask it to, backed by both the eye test and the numbers. It’s a team that can win battles, handle the grinding pressure of the postseason and elevate its game in the biggest moments. And it’s a team that does it all well.
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That’s a long checklist, one many champions don’t completely check off — not in the cap era, anyway. Go back through those past Stanley Cup winners and most of them are still probably missing at least one element from that list to the level expected of the “ideal” team. At some point, there’s a trade-off that’s usually made. A flaw that could be exposed, if not for the enormous strengths elsewhere that led them to victory.
Maybe that’s less depth, but more star power. More snarl and less skill. Stronger defense at the expense of offense. Sacrifices generally need to be made somewhere because in a cap world, no team can truly have it all. It has enough to be the best, more than the rest. But the idea here regards a higher calling.
Perfection is an exceptionally high bar to clear, but these Panthers look scarily close to it, emphatically checking every box on that list. It’s genuinely difficult to think of something this team is bad at. It’s the ideal blend of everything you want in a hockey team. It’s what helps make the Panthers feel like an unsolvable problem — they really do have it all.
That’s a problem that’s not going away anytime soon, either. As the salary cap is set to explode, the Panthers have five of their most important forwards — Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe and Anton Lundell — locked up for $40.1 million combined for six more seasons. On defense, they have Gustav Forsling and Seth Jones also locked up for the next six years at a reasonable $12.75 million. That’s one of the absolute best cores in the league earning anywhere between $10-15 million less than it should and taking up less than half of the cap for the majority of its contract.
Essentially, the Panthers are going to have a whole lot of cap room for the foreseeable future to make sure this team has the requisite depth around their core. They have the room to make sure that roster sacrifices against the ideal won’t be necessary, unlike other past champions. Florida’s window is as wide open as any team’s could possibly be, with the space to continue molding and shaping the perfect hockey team for years to come.
Just four wins away from going back-to-back, the terrifying thought is that it feels like the Florida Panthers are just getting started.
Of course, there’s still the matter of those four wins — and the Edmonton Oilers will have a lot to say about that. In order to be the “perfect team,” the season has to end with rings on everyone’s fingers and that’s not a foregone conclusion. There’s still one coin-flip series left for this Panthers team to prove its greatness.
Barkov, Tkachuk and Forsling are a trifecta few teams can match. If they can, it’s not to the level necessary to make up for the rest of Florida’s roster. The Oilers have the power to be the exception to that. As near-perfect and complete as the Panthers’ roster may feel, what the Oilers have at the top of the lineup is still better.
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Connor McDavid is a singular force as the best hockey player alive. Leon Draisaitl is right there behind him after a Hart-worthy season. And Evan Bouchard has proven himself as one of the game’s absolute best defensemen with another phenomenal playoff run. What the Panthers have at the top of the lineup is special, but in this series, the two most impactful forwards and the most impactful defensemen will be on the other side.
That’s a heavy threat to the Panthers’ hopes of going back-to-back with a dynasty on the horizon. Edmonton is another behemoth, hungry for glory — hungrier, even, given what happened last year. The Oilers, more than any team, have the power to establish a new order and make all of this moot.
If the Oilers get revenge and win, it’ll be an extremely impressive feat given what they’re up against; down a key player against a better version of the team that bested them one year ago. A Stanley Cup win against one of the most complete teams we’ve ever seen will cement their legacy — for McDavid and Draisaitl especially. They’d be the best by beating the best playing at their very best.
But the slightly more likely scenario is that the Panthers prevail on their quest for perfection. Defeating the best player in the world two years in a row would cement a legacy of their own, likely creating the same feeling of dejection on the other side felt by everyone else the Panthers have vanquished this year: It’s still not enough.
The Florida Panthers are on the precipice of something truly special with the chance to go back-to-back and maybe beyond. They’re built for that kind of greatness, built better than arguably any team in the salary-cap era before them, and built to last.
Four wins and the best of the West stand in their way. Do the Panthers go back-to-back and set the standard for the ideal hockey team, or will we bear witness to the fall of a giant so close to perfection?
(Top photo of Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Dom Luszczyszyn is a national NHL writer for The Athletic who writes primarily about hockey analytics and new ways of looking at the game. Previously, he’s worked at The Hockey News, The Nation Network and Hockey Graphs. Follow Dom on Twitter @domluszczyszyn
