The Florida Panthers on multiple occasions this season have said they either win or they learn as they maneuver their way through a chance to defend the Stanley Cup.
Well, they have been doing a lot of learning lately.
Since a four-game win streak in mid-December, the Panthers have gone 3-5-1 during over their past nine games entering Tuesday’s game against the New Jersey Devils and have not won consecutive games in this stretch.
This includes falling 4-3 to the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday after leading 2-0 after one period and 2-1 going into the third.
Monday was the Panthers’ first loss this season when leading after two periods — they were 16-0 in those situations entering the Philadelphia loss — and the first time losing in regulation after being up through 40 minutes since the 2022-23 season.
“When you win the Cup,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said postgame Monday, “you are on everybody’s calendar, it’s a big night.”
The biggest lesson the Panthers are learning in this stretch — and one Maurice has been hoping to apply all season: Figuring out how to play comfortable in tight games.
While the first two games of this rough patch were back-to-back shutout losses to the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens, each of past seven has either been decided by one goal or was a one-goal game until the winning team scored on an empty net.
“It forces you to keep your brain in a different space,” Maurice said. “You’re not chasing the game by two or three, so you’re not thinking about that kind of hockey. And you’re not leading by two or three where you get maybe more defensive or more casual when you have a big lead. We need to get in as many of these tight games as we can. … That’s what you need to do in playoff hockey.”
It was a penchant of this team during Maurice’s first two seasons and a big reason why they were able to get to the Stanley Cup Final both years and ultimately win it all last season.
As the rest of the season continues on — the Panthers still have a four-game West Coast trip later this month, another six-game road trip in mid-March and eight more sets of back-to-backs overall during their final 38 regular-season games — Florida knows it needs to embrace the grind that will come on any given night before the postseason begins.
“Obviously it would be fun to win 10 to nothing, but that’s not how it goes,” center Anton Lundell said. “Every team is good, and especially going later into the season, everybody wants to win. Every point is becoming even bigger and bigger, so it’s going to be tighter and harder. We want to be ready for that when the playoffs start for sure, but at the same time we wanna win as many games as we can right now.”
Reinhart’s special-teams success
Sam Reinhart’s knack for scoring on special teams was on full display again Monday. The All-Star winger scored shorthanded in the first period to open scoring and had a goal on the power-play in the 3:35 into the third period to give Florida a brief 3-2 lead before Philadelphia scored the final two goals to take the lead and the win.
It was Reinhart’s second game of the season with a power-play goal and a short-handed goal and his third overall with the Panthers, which stands as the franchise record (Pavel Bure and Aleksander Barkov each have two).
Reinhart is up to 27 goals on the season, second behind only the Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl (31). Of those 27, an NHL-leading five have come short-handed and another nine have come on the power play.
Reinhart also had five short-handed goals last season. According to NHL Stats, Reinhart is just the second player in the past 20 years to score five or more short-handed goals in consecutive seasons, joining former Flyers forward Mike Richards (2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons).
“He’s been flat-out great every night,” Maurice said.
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