The Florida Panthers clearly mean business heading into playoffs

Tyler Yaremchuk was joined by Frank Seravalli to discuss the Florida Panthers season and if they could win the Stanley Cup this year on the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Frank, it’s April Fools Day so why not have a little fun here and look back through the season and look at a few moments when you and I were the fools.

Frank Seravalli: For me, I was scrolling through my 32 bold predictions from before the season started and one of them was that for the third time in four seasons, last year’s Stanley Cup finalist the Florida Panthers would miss the playoffs. Well, that didn’t exactly look great. It still doesn’t, closing in on 100 points.

To me, it’s amazing the way that that team has played just from jump street this year, not having Montour and Ekblad. Look at the issues that the New Jersey Devils have run into all season long missing so many key defensemen. I figured the Panthers might fall into that category. The fact that they got what they did out of Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Dmitry Kulikov and Gustav Forsling. Go through the list, it’s been an incredibly impressive year and I wasn’t sure that Sergei Bobrovsky could come back and be as good as he’s been.

I made this point last week. Think about one year ago at this time, the guy who started game one in the playoffs was Alex Lyon, he doesn’t even play for the team anymore. Sergei Bovrovsky had a north of 3.00 goals against average at this point last year. He has a .916 SV% this year, I didn’t see any of that coming and it was a horrible take and now the Florida Panthers. If I had to pick a team that advances to the cup final and makes it through the East, I would pick the Panthers.

You can watch the rest of the episode here: