Colby Guy
The Florida Panthers enter December two points out of a playoff spot after going 5-6-3 during the month of November.
With the team sitting 10-9-4 through its first 23 games under head coach Paul Maurice, there is a sense of concern surrounding the team — especially from its fanbase.
I opened the mailbag yet again for this month’s rendition of the Temperature Check.
Many submissions relating to the team’s head coaching position.
As always, I pull your Hot Takes off Twitter and assign them a score of 1 to 100 — with 100 being a scorching hot take and 1 being very reasonable.
This will be a monthly feature on FHN, so if you do not want to miss out on the next one, follow me on Twitter at @ColbyDGuy.
Let’s get this party started…
*Note: Some of these have been edited for the sake of clarity.
“Fire Paul Maurice” — Kyle
Heat Index: 70
For those who remember the last rendition of the Temp Check, I gave this take a 96.
I lowered that number to 70 this time around for a few reasons.
Systematically, it seems like this team is not fitting what Maurice is trying to do.
This team is built to be a high-tempo offensive team that generates a lot of rush chances and his M-O has been a dump-and-chase system.
While analytics like what the Panthers are doing, they do not necessarily have the pieces to be that chippy net-front team Maurice wants them to be outside of Matthew Tkachuk.
With this being a results-based industry, 10-9-4 through the first two months of the season in not great, considering this is a team which basically cruised through its previous regular season with relative ease and returned a large chunk of the roster.
The reason why I have it as high as 70 is that the Panthers will be hard-pressed to find a replacement who fits their system at this point of the season.
Andrew Brunette is probably not leaving New Jersey even if Florida were to call him up and offer him his old (interim) job back.
George: They’re not calling Andrew Brunette.
Joel Quenneville reportedly has a long way to go before Gary Bettman gives him the green light to rejoin the league — and quite frankly he should not have a place in the National Hockey League.
Not after his complacency during the Chicago Blackhawks’ sexual assault scandal in 2010 and his attempts to cover up for it afterward.
The only big-name coaching free agent out there is Barry Trotz and there are a couple of problems that arise there.
For one, it seems like he is perfectly content away from hockey at this present moment and will probably wait longer before taking another head coaching job.
The other being that his defense-heavy system has already proven to not be what this team needs at this point in time given how the Maurice Era has started.
With all of that being said, the Panthers should at least play out the season and see what they have in Maurice — then they should evaluate the situation from there.
The Panthers buy out Sergei Bobrovsky’s contract if they are unable to find a trade partner — Matthew Goldberg
Heat Index: 50
With Spencer Knight very much looking like the Panthers’ starting goalie of the present, this could work in theory.
There are a couple of wrinkles to that, however.
If the Panthers were to buy him out this June, they would be on the hook for a $6.66 million cap penalty for the next three seasons and $1.66 for the following three after that.
I am not sure if the Panthers would be so willing to corner themselves that hard with buyout money after the headache Keith Yandle’s $5.3 million in buyout costs is giving them this season.
Each year they wait to buy him out, they would save a year of paying him $6.66 million and a year of paying him $1.66 million, so perhaps it becomes worthwhile to do so in the last year of his contract if they are unable to trade him by then.
If Bobrovsky keeps playing the way he has — to the tune of a 4-6-1 record with a .878/3.84 — the Panthers could grow closer and closer to being willing to cut bait soon, though.
George: IF the Panthers were to buyout Bobrovsky’s contract, it would not be until after next season. While the dead cap hit is still large, with two years left on the deal they would get hit more in cap money than real money. Most of the contract will have been paid out in the first five years. Anyway, there’s a lot of math here. But it’s not happening until 2024 if it happens at all.
Sam Bennett should be traded — FlaPanthersPP
Heat Index: 30
As things stand right now, the Panthers will have to make a trade in order to activate Anthony Duclair off of long-term injured reserve and there are only a limited amount of candidates who could move.
As it stands right now, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart or Duclair himself seem to be the only extra pieces the Panthers could give up to get themselves out of that situation.
Brandon Montour’s $3.5 million cap hit would also allow them to activate Duclair but the Panthers are already weak on the blueline as it is, so that name is a no-go.
Sasha Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe would be untouchable pieces up front. Patric Hornqvist is unlikely to be dealt.
Right away, Reinhart’s chemistry with Anton Lundell provides much more value to the team than anything Florida’s other two options do, so it would be in the Panthers’ best interest if he stuck around.
That leaves Bennett and Duclair as the two potential candidates to be moved.
And, in my opinion, Bennett should be the one to go.
First off, trading Bennett’s $4.4 million cap hit to bring Anthony Duclair’s $3 million off of LTIR will allow the Panthers to carry an extra skater — which will help them for multiple reasons that I will go over later.
The Panthers also have a deep complement of players who can slide to the center position — and Lundell, who is ready to take over the second-line role — while Duclair brings a combination of speed and shooting ability that is rare in this iteration of the Panthers’ lineup.
Something could very well come up that could allow the Panthers to activate Duclair without needing to unload anybody, but if they do need to, it likely could be Bennett.
Duclair has yet to start skating, so the Panthers likely have at least another month or two before they have to put an action in motion.
George: A lot can happen between now and when the Panthers have to activate Duclair off LTIR. Right this second, yes, they would have to make a trade. But we are a long way from that decision having to be made.
The Panthers should’ve been named the “Florida Men” instead — HousecatsNSH
Heat Index: 20
To give everyone, and myself, a little mental health break from the madness here, let’s have a little fun for a second.
Per George, this Florida Man trend was not a thing in 1993 — when the news was mainly spread via newspapers instead of the internet — so Panthers would have been much more fitting at the time.
Although, “Florida Men” sounds a whole lot better than the original “Florida Blockbusters” moniker Wayne Huizenga was trying to secure to promote one of his many business endeavors…
In retrospect, it would be hilarious for every game story to read like a Florida Man article — although I am not sure how good that would be for business with SEO being king for us journalists nowadays.
George: Yeah, I don’t get the point of this one.
Seems like the team is gassed — and salary cap issues are to blame for not being able to take anyone out — Eric
Heat Index: 19
Taking into consideration the fact that the team has already had to play a man down three times this year, it has definitely become a problem this season.
The main concern that is brought up with the inability to roster any healthy scratches is the fact they cannot give players like Eric and Marc Staal days off when it is evident that they need them.
If the Panthers were able to roster at least 21 skaters, Eric would be in a Joe Thornton-type role where he’d play about 30 to 40 games a season when the team needs a boost on the penalty kill or if someone is injured that day.
Marc is up there in age as well at 35 and has gotten beaten a ton of times because he cannot keep up with the league’s best at a night-to-night basis anymore. He would be better served in a seventh defenseman role as well, or at least in a role where he can get a few days off when needed.
It definitely has been a factor but one a lot of guys refuse to use as an excuse as to why the team is struggling.
George: In normal times, with 23 players on the roster, having a couple of veteran players is no big deal. You don’t have to play them every night much less in back-to-backs. These Panthers do. They certainly look a little tuckered out, especially with all the close games they play. This is one problem I do not see getting fixed as the season rolls along. Basically, they’re not getting fresher.
Florida should trade Aaron Ekblad — JAlt
Heat Index: 65
Aaron Ekbald has looked far from himself defensively this season but I think it has more to do with the Panthers putting him back in the lineup a little too early than a complete dropoff he cannot recover from.
This was a comment I saw a lot of on my feeler tweet and one of the reasons as to why that should be the case is that they should be wanting to sell him off at as high of a price as they can.
That price is likely not as high as it could be with Ekblad coming off of three separate lower-body injuries.
Ekblad’s offense has been returning to form with seven points over the course of his active five-game point streak after starting the season with three points in his first seven games, so he is slowly progressing back to himself.
He also is one of the biggest leaders in the locker room, so I think a mid-season shakeup this big would do more harm than good for a team that does not have its first-round pick.
There is also a zero percent chance that he even waived his full no-movement trade if a trade even happens — which it most likely won’t.
George: They are not trading Aaron Ekblad.
This team finishes the season with 85 points — Angelo Stincone
Heat Index: 50
While the results are currently showing that the Panthers are on track to finish near that mark, there are a lot of signs showing that they can get out of this funk.
They are near the top of the league in shots and scoring chances but they are not converting on nearly as many of those chances as they would like. Goaltending is also very much an issue, as we have gone over earlier.
If the Panthers can regain consistency in both of those areas, they could still very well hit the high-90s or even somewhere over 100 if they can heat up and go on a run.
The problem is that they are not well-adjusted to Maurice’s offensive system and it is costing them dearly.
George: I think the Panthers end up north of 97 points and that may not be enough in the East to make the playoffs. As long as they start doing some damage within the division — lots of games left with Toronto, Detroit, Tampa, etc. — they’ll be OK.