The Panthers haven’t been at full strength in quite some time – so how dangerous can they be?

The defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are looking for another ring this spring, but just how dangerous of an opponent could they be in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

Taking on the Tampa Bay Lightning in the opening round, the Panthers will bring a largely healthy and full-strength lineup into the postseason, a factor that has not been on their side in the last few months of the regular season. 

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli break down just how good the Panthers can be after finishing third in the Atlantic Division. 

Yaremchuk: What about the Battle of Florida? I see a lot of split opinions on this one. A handful of people are going with the Florida Panthers as the defending Stanley Cup champions, with back-to-back trips to the Cup final. They were banged up down the stretch, but they’re getting a lot of those guys back: Aaron Ekblad will have to miss the first couple of games, then he returns to the lineup and then Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett and go down the list. 

But it’s interesting to look at this board we have up and see that Tampa has them beat in goals for, goals against, power play and penalty kill. I think the Bolts are the better team.

Seravalli: The Bolts have home ice, so their record would indicate that they were the better team in the regular season…I’m trying to properly evaluate the Florida Panthers, because we haven’t seen a full view of what they look like, kind of since the Seth Jones trade, which was before the deadline. 

We haven’t seen an iteration yet with Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, Sam Bennett, all those guys on the ice, who are an absolute handful to play against, and I didn’t even mention Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhardt. 

I understand everyone’s thought process about a compounding effect on the hockey that you’ve seen played by the Florida Panthers over the last two years, but at the same time, Tampa should be intimately familiar with that argument, because they were the team that had won two Stanley Cups back to back. That third year, they got to the Stanley Cup final again and lost to the Avalanche.

I just think a lot of people are looking past the Panthers because of how they enter the playoffs, as opposed to saying you haven’t seen them at full strength yet. I think the biggest wild card is how healthy Matthew Tkachuk is.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…