Florida Panthers On the Rise

With 26 games left in their season, the unheralded Florida Panthers have been making a push not only to get into the postseason, but to move up enough in the standings to have a realistic shot at making some serious noise once they get there.

Once occupying the NHL Southeast cellar, the Panthers have come a long way since, beginning with a three-game home stand back in November against Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. While losing two of those three games, they surprisingly picked up four of the possible six points they could have earned by taking both the Devils and Rangers to overtime before losing.

They followed that up by thrashing the Rangers at the Garden 4-0 in their final game of November, and then going 7-5-2 in the month of December, including five wins in their first six games of the month. Still, at that point they still hadn’t given any solid reason to believe they would be a team to believe in.

In fact, at that point, you could find a hundred people who would have believed the Rangers were making a push for the Eastern Conference Finals for every one you could find who believed the Panthers would even make the playoffs.

My, how things have changed.

While the Rangers have gone into a disastrous swoon over the last month and a half, going 7-8-3, the Panthers began the year on a hot streak, going 7-2-3 in the month of January, and have continued playing with passion in the month of February, going 5-2-0, making them 12-4-3 since New Year’s Eve. They have been one of the hottest teams in the NHL over that span.

Even this surge hasn’t helped them fully overcome their abysmal start, but the Panthers have climbed into 7th Place in the Eastern Conference (tied with Buffalo with 64 points), and are notably only two points behind both the Montreal Canadians and the New York Rangers, and only six points from the unthinkable—a fourth place finish ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers and home-ice advantage in the playoffs.

And this turnaround is even more amazing when you consider the early injuries to forwards Nathan Horton, Cory Stillman, and Richard Zednik. However, some of their reserves stepped up their games and have given Florida hockey fans the hope that something special could be on the horizon.

With a nice mix of homegrown players such as LW David Booth (20 G, 15 A), C Gregory Campbell (12 G, 14 A), RW Radek Dvorak (8 G, 16 A), D Jay Bouwmeester (12 G, 18 A), C Michael Frolik (14 G, 13 A), C Nathan Horton (16 G, 19 A), and C Stephen Weiss (9 G, 30 A) added to acquisitions like D Keith Ballard (5 G, 18 A), D Nick Boynton (4 G, 11 A), D Bryan McCabe (10 G, 15 A), LW Ville Peltonen (9 G, 13 A), LW Cory Stillman (11 G, 22 A), RW Richard Zednik (11 G, 12 A), and Goalies Tomas Vokoun (18-16-3, .923 SV percentage, 2.52 GAA) and Craig Anderson (10-4-5, .929 SV percentage, 2.49 GAA) the Panthers have assembled a very balanced team.

This balance has worked well for them so far, and considering they seem to have quieted the grumblings of defenseman Jay Bouwmeester for the moment they may have a team that has no real distractions coming down the stretch. Sure, they lost their last game, and the stretch of games they face the rest of this month is anything but a picnic (the Devils, Blackhawks, and Bruins at home followed by three on the road against those same Bruins, the Rangers, and the Devils again) but Florida seems to be a team on the rise.

Their first big test will come Tuesday night when they face the Devils, whom they’ve never had much success against. Here’s hoping they can continue their passionate play and give us Cat fans even more hope this year.

Whatever happens over the rest of the season though, the Panthers have followed the Florida Marlins, Miami Dolphins, and Miami Heat in providing surprisingly successful seasons following the recent woes of Miami's big four sports franchises, making a Panthers game worth tuning in for. Gotta love ‘em for that alone.