The regular season is over for the Florida Panthers.
For the sixth straight season, that only means its time for the real fun to begin.
Florida closed out their regular season schedule on Tuesday night, dropping Game 82 to the Tampa Bay Lightning by a final score of 5-1.
While yes, it was a preview of the upcoming Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Cats and Bolts, the game was far from an example of what those games will look like.
The Panthers knew they were locked into third place in the Atlantic Division and had nothing to play for in terms of playoff positioning, so Florida rested several of their regular players, including Sasha Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell and Gus Forsling.
They’ll look much different when they line up for Game 1 at Amalie Arena.
Let’s get to Tuesday’s takeaways:
NO MORE CRAZY SCHEDULE
With the end of the regular season comes Florida never having to deal with that insane schedule ever again.
Well, hopefully not.
Now that it’s playoff time, schedules will calm down into a much more traditional and predictable layout.
Sure, there will be the random extra day off or back-to-back, but for the most part, it’ll be at least one day between games, sometimes two, due to travel, elimination games or scheduling conflicts.
While the Panthers didn’t look particularly good during Tuesday’s game in Tampa, their schedule and depleted roster had a hand in that.
At least for the start of the playoffs, neither of those should be an issue.
“That’s an example of what nine games in 15 days does,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “I’m learning for the first time. I’ve gone about 27 seasons and I’ve never seen that schedule before.”
SOME THINGS TO LIKE
The game may have been an overall stinker, but that’ll happen when you fall behind 3-0 in the first period and never trim the deficit smaller.
Nobody was making excuses after the game, but this was one of those nights where Tampa was sharp, they were aggressive and they were getting many of the bounces, which often happens to the team deserving of such grace from the hockey gods.
Still, leaving it to Maurice to pull some positives from the effort.
‘Carter Verhaeghe looks like he’s back, I loved Roddy’s (Evan Rodrigues) game tonight, I thought he was going,” Maurice said. “I thought the (penalty) kill was good when it had to be at times. We got out and I don’t think we lost any more players, which is a nice change for us.”
PUMPED FOR THE POSTSEASON
Now it’s time to shift the mentality to a seven-game series. Win four before they do.
Over the past several seasons, the Panthers have earned their stripes and learned the ins and outs of how to win during the playoffs.
As has been the case in each of the past two years, Florida’s postseason roster looks quite different than it did a year ago.
The Panthers feel they’ve never had a deeper roster, and if they can get everyone healthy sometime during round one, it will be fun to see just what this group is capable of.
You better believe they’re all chomping at the bit to get going.
“I think they’re excited about the start,” Maurice said. “I think we had a real learning experience this year, going through the grind of a regular season after last year, and lost some guys for big chunks of time, so it was a grinder for us, but there was lots to learn, and they stuck together and were cheering for each other, and now we’re at the part of the year that everybody’s really excited about.”
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