After clinching the Presidents’ Trophy, the Florida Panthers have already guaranteed they’ll finish the year with one of the NHL’s marquee pieces of hardware.
Now the quest officially begins for the one they really care about. The chase for the Stanley Cup will get started Monday. “When your career’s over and to be able to say you won one is obviously a big accomplishment. It’s something you can always say,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said, “but, at the end of the day, we’ve got eyes on the bigger prize.”
For the second straight day, the Panthers rested the vast majority of their best players Friday for their regular-season finale. After clinching the Presidents’ Trophy a night earlier, Florida had nothing at stake when it faced the Montreal Canadiens in Quebec.
Instead, the focus was just on making sure they’re as healthy as possible when they open the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs against the Washington Capitals next week.
The final result of regular-season finale in Canada — a 10-2 loss the Canadiens — was entirely meaningless with both teams locked into their divergent position in the standings.
A night earlier, the Panthers followed their rout of Ottawa Senators by piling on to the team bus and celebrating as they watched the Nashville Predators beat the Colorado Avalanche in a shootout to guarantee Florida the best record in the NHL and home-ice advantage throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Quickly, the Panthers shifted their focus back to the Cup playoffs. “We pull our phones out and we were standing there, cheering for Nashville,” the right wing Patric Hornqvist said.
“It’s a big milestone for this season, but we’re not done yet."
The franchise records for points, wins and goals won’t mean anything if Florida (58-18-6) can’t win a playoff series for the first time since it reached the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals and its first-round opponent won’t make things easy.
The Panthers officially drew the Washington Capitals as their opening-round foe Friday with their 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers on Friday.
Florida and Washington met three times in the regular season, with the Capitals winning once, the Panthers winning twice — including once in overtime — and all three games being decided by one goal.
Washington has a postseason track record Florida can’t match: The Capitals won their first Stanley Cup in 2018 and their 104 playoff games in the last decade are fourth most in the NHL; the Panthers have never won a Cup and played just 54 playoff games in their entire history.
Florida, however, has a no one can match for this season, even with its season-ending blowout loss at the Bell Centre in Montreal: The Panthers are the first team since the 1995-96 NHL season to average at least four goals per game and they boast a top-12 defense, too.
Florida will be a first-round favorite and maybe the favorite to win the whole thing. The Presidents’ Trophy is a reminder why, rather than a reason. In the 33 years the trophy has been given out, only nine winners have gone on to win the championship and none since the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013.
Four of the last 13 winners have even been bounced in the first round of the playoffs.
The Panthers did not make any real effort to chase the trophy, though. On Thursday, Florida sat Huberdeau, Aleksander Barkov, Claude Giroux, Anton Lundell, Mason Marchment, MacKenzie Weegar, Gustav Forsling, Radko Gudas and Sergei Bobrovsky, content to finish second in the race for the Presidents’ Trophy after it locked up the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
On Friday, Brunette again rested Huberdeau, Barkov, Giroux, Marchment, Weegar, Gudas and Bobrovsky, and benched forwards Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart, too.
The last-place Canadiens (22-49-11) jumped ahead 4-0 before defenseman Ben Chiarot scored with 1:37 left in the first period to ensure the Panthers would avoid a shutout, making them the first team in franchise history to go a full season without getting blanked.
It was the only bit of drama the game contained as third-string goaltender Jonas Johansson, playing in his first game of the season, gave up 10 goals on 37 shots.
Florida had Lundell and Forsling sitting on their bench, but never used them, even with a chance to set the NHL’s single-season record with a 30th come-from-behind win. Regular-season records are trivial. The real season is about to begin.
