George Richards, FHN Publisher
SUNRISE — The Florida Panthers wrapped up the first quarter of their season Saturday night by playing in Game No. 21.
While it did not go the way most would have thought, few could criticize the way they started their season.
Saturday, the Panthers lost to the expansion Seattle Kraken and Chris Driedger to drop their second consecutive game.
It sounds worse than it is.
Through the first 21 games of this 82-game (the NHL hopes) season, Florida is off to the best start in franchise history.
Have the past few weeks been as good as the first few weeks?
Nope.
But that doesn’t mean the Panthers have any reason to panic.
Cause for some concern, well, perhaps.
”We feel good, we just need to start another streak,” Joe Thornton said after Saturday’s 4-1 loss to the Kraken in which the team’s 11-game home winning streak to start the season came to a close.
“It was a good streak at home and Tuesday we have to start another one.”
The Panthers go into Sunday tied for first place in the entire NHL.
Florida’s 31 points are tied with Carolina, Washington and Toronto. Being in first sounds great until one realizes all four teams are in the Eastern Conference and two are are in the Atlantic division.
Still, most — OK, everyone — would have taken this start by the Panthers when the season started.
The Panthers were considered a legitimate contender and their start certainly has not changed many minds. At least not negatively.
Florida came into the weekend a little banged up and it apparently has been costly.
The Panthers have been without captain Sasha Barkov since he hurt his left knee in a collision with Scott Mayfield of the Islanders.
Florida has also been without Anthony Duclair in its past two losses to the Capitals and Kraken.
No excuses, though.
Losing to the Capitals in Washington was understandable; Saturday’s loss seems to be one of those things.
Good or bad, teams lose games.
The Panthers are a good team. A really good team.
At 14-4-3 they have shown that.
This is a really long season and Florida looks like a team which will win a lot more than they lose.
“We have to get back to work, we have lost two in a row and did that a few weeks ago,” said interim coach Andrew Brunette, who took over behind the bench when Joel Quenneville got caught up in a sexual assault investigation from 2010 when he was coaching the Blackhawks.
Florida is struggling on the power play right now and are a team trying to find the right combinations after everything looked so smooth earlier in the year.
Yet, this is a team which has banked a lot of points and, statistically, is all but assured a playoff spot.
When the season started off with Florida winning its first eight games, talk about the President’s Trophy and a top playoff seed got started.
The Panthers may still get there.
Right now, this team is trying to figure itself out with a new coach and without its best and most valuable player.
There is a lot for this team to be thankful for, but there’s also work to be done.
Fortunately for the Panthers, there are 61 more games to be played.
They have made it to the quarter pole of their season in better shape than any Florida team in history.
Things could be much worse.
Hard to imagine they could be much better.