The gap between Panthers, Lightning is still wide. Florida’s next step is copying Tampa

The Florida Panthers want to be the next Tampa Bay Lightning. It’s not something they try to hide. Andrew Brunette said as much only about 15 minutes after another Panthers’ season ended before NHL Conference Finals with a four-game series loss to the rival Lightning.

“They’re Stanley Cup champions for a reason and their evolution of how they were once a high-flying kind of offensive team, and they found their recipe how to win, and they stick with it,” the interim coach said Monday after Florida’s season ended with a 2-0 loss at Amalie Arena in Tampa. “Obviously, we aspire to be them.”

Panthers’ record-breaking season ends with devastating 2nd-round sweep by rival Lightning

After last year, the Panthers believed they were close. They took Tampa Bay to six games in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, then watched the Lightning win a second consecutive Stanley Cup and felt like they gave their in-state rival a tougher test than anyone else. They believed they would be ready for a rematch in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, if it came.

Now, they’re even further away, at least based on the scoreboard. Tampa Bay swept Florida out of the second round 4-0, and the Panthers never led after Game 1 last Tuesday in Sunrise. Florida, which led the NHL with 4.11 goals per game in the regular season, scored just three total goals in Round 2 and became only the fourth team to get swept out of the Stanley Cup playoffs after winning the Presidents’ Trophy.

By winning a postseason series for the first time in 26 years, the Panthers got closer to winning a Cup than they have since reaching the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals. By failing to win a game against the Lightning, they’re still a long way away from matching the league’s current gold standard.

“I think we’re closer, but we got swept and there was another level we’ve got to climb, so we’re still climbing,” Brunette said. “I believed that we were ready for that next step. Unfortunately, we fell short.”

No excuse or consolation: Panthers swept out of playoffs in 2-0 loss a crushing way to end | Opinion

It will send Florida into another pivotal offseason, full of questions for general manager Bill Zito to answer.

Brunette’s future will be right at the top of the list. He’s still the interim coach — he ascended into the job in the first month of the season after former coach Joel Quenneville resigned following revelations about his role in the Chicago Blackhawks’ mishandling of a 2010 sexual-assault allegation — and Zito never committed to removing the label. Brunette also was noncommital about even wanting to keep the job on a full-time basis.

“It’s been a real chaotic stretch kind of since October. I think I stayed in the day-to-day grind of it. I didn’t want to look too far ahead and I think I did a pretty good job with that,” Brunette said. “Now, I’m going to take some time. Obviously, they’re going to have decisions and go from there. It was a great experience, it was a fun group to coach, I’m proud of their effort and I think there’s more there, and I believe the group will take another step, but we’ll get there.

“I love this team. Of course, I’d love to, but those are not really my decisions. Obviously, I have a family I have to talk with, see if this is what they want. We were kind of thrown into this a little bit, so talk to my wife, see if, after playing for 20 years, she’s still on board for this.”

Whether it’s Brunette or someone else, the next full-time coach will have to work with Zito to figure whether there’s something fundamentally wrong with these Panthers or if this is just the natural curve of a still-young team trying to figure out how to win in the Cup playoffs.

Florida, after all, did outshoot Tampa Bay in two of four games and generated more scoring chances in all four. The Panthers piled up 49 shots on goal in Game 4 and mostly lost the series because of the play of All-Star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. In three of four games, Florida was within one goal in the final five minutes.

“Most of the games were tight games, but they ended up coming on top every game,” star center Aleksander Barkov said Monday, “so that’s how it went.”

The counterargument is a case Brunette presented when looking at the growth of the Lightning. In the 2018-19 NHL season, Tampa Bay led the league with 3.89 goals per game and won its first Presidents’ Trophy, and promptly got swept out of the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs. The Lightning didn’t blow it up, but instead retooled as a more defensive-minded team, dropping to fourth in the NHL in scoring in the last three seasons, while jumping from eighth to fifth in goals allowed per game.

The Panthers have the personnel to make this same sort of change. Barkov is a finalist for the Frank J. Selke Trophy for the second straight year. All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau is improved enough as a defensive player to log major minutes on the penalty kill. Star goaltenders Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight give them two good options in net. They even have two star defensemen with Aaron Ekblad and MacKenzie Weegar.

After last year, Florida said it learned from Tampa Bay. The Panthers can again before next season, only this time it’ll be from watching how the Lightning exposed their flaws.

“They kept it tight,” Ekblad said Monday. “That’s obviously an experienced team that’s been there, done that and they know when they have the lead that they’re going to hold onto it.”

Said Brunette: “Their attention was to make sure that they try to take away our rush game, slowed us down a little bit. It was pretty evident. Last year was a little bit of a chaotic series and sometimes that plays in our favor a little bit.”

In the final game of its season, Florida finally looked like its regular-season self for really the first time in the playoffs.

It also got shut out for the first time all year.

It’s an odd way for the season to end. If the Panthers had played like they did in Game 4 for the entirety of the second round, the series almost certainly would’ve been competitive.

A few years ago, Tampa Bay learned from a similar sort of ending and changed for the better. In one way or another, Florida will have to copy its rival.

“They play their way, we play our way,” Brunette said. “The learning is all the little things they do that win hockey games.”