The Florida Panthers waited a quarter-century for a run like last season. That’s a painful truth. They were first in the league in regular-season points. They won a playoff series for the first time since the blessed year of 1996.
Now they start again Thursday at the New York Islanders not wanting a season at all like last season. That’s the hard truth, too. There’s a new coach, Paul Maurice, with a new system. There’s a changed roster starting on the marquee where Panthers lifer Jonathan Huberdeau is out and young star Matthew Tkachuk is in.
The best-managed organizations can self-scout themselves, and we’re about to find out if the Panthers have graduated to one of those. General Manager Bill Zito has made some smart moves in his time. This is his biggest gamble, this offseason shake-up to take the Panthers from good to great.
How easy would it have been to skate back last season and expect measured improvement? The Panthers’ game was too cute for the playoffs, Zito’s moves say, too fundamentally fun in leading the league in goals scored.
Maurice cut to the core of the matter in analyzing Thursday’s opener against the Islanders: “They’re trying to increase offensive output, and we’re trying to make sure we can keep ours but add a defensive grind our game.”
That’s the Panthers changes in a sentence.
“Things that are sometimes easy over the course of an 82-game season that just completely disappear in [the playoffs]” Maurice said. “There’s no easy ice. So the game gets more played to the walls and heavier in the corners and it’s more of a battle game.
“If you expect that, and you’re fine with that and have that as part of your game, there’s no reason why you can’t flourish. If you rely on a rush game [up the ice] in the playoffs, you’re going to struggle unless your special teams are lights-out. The rush game disappears. Nobody gets caught deep. The back pressure’s elite. So there’s no easy ice in the playoffs.”
That sums how the Panthers were swept in the playoffs and how their system failed. It explains in part why Huberdeau, a high-scorer who disappeared last playoffs, was traded with defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, for the more complete game of Tkachuk.
The other reason: It was a no-brainer for age and talent reasons. Huberdeau was 29 and the mega-deal he needed would carry into his declining years. Tkachuk is 24. The Panthers eight-year, $76-million deal covers the prime of his career. He brings a physical component and loud style the Panthers need, too.
“An edge,’’ Maurice says the second line of Tkachuk and center Sam Bennett brings.
Speed, though, remains the Panthers’ calling card through all these changes. Maurice said the coaching staff asked one question in studying what to install.
“How can we keep what [the players] do so very well, that speed game?” Maurice said. “Some of it is off chaos. Some of it is ad-lib. It’s very good. It’s highly unusual that they have it. We had a handful of commandments, and one of them is, ‘Don’t slow your team down.’ ‘’
The result of all this change won’t be known until next postseason.
“We want to play a game that can be replicated in the playoffs, that we don’t make any adjustments when we go in,’’ Maurice said. “It is different. The game isn’t played like that during the regular season. It’s not out of laziness. It’s out of survival.
“But the mentality of the game can be talked about. When we talk about the decisions we make and the how we approach the game, we should be the exact same when we get to the playoffs. We shouldn’t be adding things or changing our game at that time of year.”
Maurice appreciated the Panthers’ games last season enough to select them on television after he quit as Winnipeg’s coach in December. Their games were fun, too. The scoring. The winning. The fans’ chant of goals on some nights of, “We want 10.”
“We want the Stanley Cup,’’ is Zito’s mantra in making change. Big change. Thursday’s opener starts the long journey to see if it works.
