Colby Guy
Less than a year after completing a historic Presidents’ Trophy-winning season, the Florida Panthers find themselves below .500 at the midway point of the season.
With a loss to the Dallas Stars on Sunday, the Panthers now have more regulation losses (19) in 41 games than they did in 82 games last year (18) and are moving toward missing the postseason for the first time since 2019.
When FHN ran midseason report cards last year, 12 players received an A or above.
That obviously is not be the case this year.
Some players may get a bit of a pass due to a slew of injuries and illnesses that have taken over the locker room, but I typically grade down when doing these report cards.
And in a season where a once-dominant Florida team finds itself six points out of a wildcard spot, it is deservedly so.
Anyway, without further delay, here are the grades:
Despite going through two months of injury and illness, Barkov still finds himself hanging around a point-per-game pace. Pretty good, but not what is usually expected from the Panthers’ captain.
Barkov has just one multi-goal game this year and is eight goals short of what he had at the midway point last season.
While he has been looking better since recovering from the illness, he needs to channel that elite scoring touch of his if the Florida Panthers are going to dig out of the hole they dug for themselves.
After having a career season last year, Bennett’s goal numbers have fallen off dramatically.
He was off to a solid start to the season with seven goals and 18 points in his first 24 games but took a drastic drop-off in December.
Bennett has just one goal since Dec. 1 and, while he has done a good job at creating chances, his finishing touch from his 28-goal 2021-22 season has effectively vanished.
Bobrovsky’s first half has been a tale of two goaltenders.
He started the season 4-6-1 with an abysmal slash line of .878/3.84 at a time when he was not seeing as many pucks and has since returned to form.
Since the start of December, he is 5-6-0 with a .913 save percentage that ranks 11th amongst goaltenders who have made more than 10 starts since the start of the month.
His 2.69 goals-against average in that span also ranks 14th. While it is not the Vezina quality goaltending the Florida Panthers signed him for, he has been far from the problem lately.
Cousins has done almost everything Florida asked him to do when they signed him to a two-year, $2.2 million contract this offseason.
He has been a serviceable fourth-liner who has contributed both down the middle and on the wing. While his offensive numbers aren’t pretty, he has been arguably the most consistent of the three forwards the Panthers signed when free agency opened and his line was the most consistent in December.
Dalpe arguably had a better month of December than a handful of NHL regulars while stepping up as an emergency call-up.
He had four points in 10 games (10th on the team) while playing just 9:48 a night. He also won 55.3 percent of his face-offs, which led all of Florida’s natural centers in the month of December.
He did his job.
While Ekblad has certainly not had the cleanest bill of health this year — sustaining a groin injury he missed 11 games with and a shoulder injury just before the holiday break — he still has fallen far from expectations this year.
The once-potent scoring defenseman went 18 games without a goal before breaking his drought on Friday. He has also lost a step or three defensively and his minus-17 plus/minus is certainly reflective of that.
Forsling has quietly been one of the Florida Panthers most effective players, recording assists at a fairly high clip and playing a responsible two-way game.
He and Brandon Montour were a huge reason why the Panthers stayed afloat to the tune of a 6-4-1 record while Ekblad was missing from the lineup in December.
Both were effective on the same pairing at the time and Forsling has since picked up Ekblad’s slack defensively since he returned to his left side.
Gudas has molded himself into a true defensive stalwart and a leader on this team while helping Josh Mahura develop from waiver claim to reliable NHL defenseman in the process.
While his future is in question with his $2.5 AAV contract expiring this offseason, he is a player the Panthers very much want to keep.
Hornqvist has brought the leadership the team has wanted to the locker room but has not had the chance to do a whole lot on the ice after suffering two concussions in the first half of the season.
He is projected to be out long-term and it is unknown if he will return to the Panthers before his contract expires during the offseason.
When the Panthers have needed an injury replacement on the back end, Kiersted has proved to be the guy. And for good reason.
In his latest stint, Kiersted had the third-most points from a defenseman with four in 10 games and has significantly improved on the defensive end. He has become more aggressive on the puck and has won more puck battles in turn.
He only played 9:06 a night, but the 24-year-old’s future looks pretty promising going forward.
Starting in November, Knight appeared to be running away with the Panthers’ No. 1 job with a 5-3-3 record and a .928/2.44 slash line. His save percentage was fourth in the league in that span.
Then his start on Dec. 7 happened. He allowed three goals on 15 shots before leaving with an apparent illness and has not been the same since returning to the lineup.
Knight has allowed at least four goals in three of his four starts since returning — including seven to the red-hot Boston Bruins in his first game back — and has a .860/4.52 slash line in that time.
A lot of it has to do with the poor play in front of him and the Panthers’ curious decision-making to roll him out against the league’s best teams after a lengthy absence, but he has yet to find his stride.
Pretty similarly to Cousins, he has been a part of Florida’s most consistent line as of late and has brought the energy this team has needed to stay alive at times.
His offensive numbers aren’t the same pace as his nine goals and 18 points in 51 games last year, but a lot of those numbers came in a small stretch of time where he got minutes next to Jonathan Huberdeau and Claude Giroux in a much more offense-friendly system.
Lomberg has still created chances with his speed at times, but he has not finished as many of them. And that’s okay.
Lundell was off to a promising start to the season with nine points in his first 14 games but has hit a snag as of late.
Some of that has had to do with him dealing with an upper-body injury and an illness simultaneously in December that he has still been working his way back from but it still does not hide the fact that he has had a sophomore slump.
At 21, Lundell is still very much finding his game in the NHL. Once he becomes more of an aggressive shooter, his numbers should return to the form they were in when he was lighting up the Finnish league.
The emergence of Luostarinen has been one of the few positives of this Panthers season.
He has become one of Florida’s most reliable players across the board, playing a pivotal role in the defensive zone while already matching his career-high in goals in half as many games.
There is obviously still room to grow offensively for Eetu, but he has had himself a breakout year.
Ever since being claimed off waivers days before the regular season started, Mahura has fit into the Panthers’ system seamlessly.
He is a plus skater who has made few mistakes in his own end and he has not been afraid to jump up into the offensive zone as well. That has culminated in a team-leading plus-15 rating that only Forsling (plus-13) and Luostarinen (plus-11) come close to.
To put it simply, Montour has been Florida’s best defenseman this year in what has been a breakout season.
The 28-year-old ranks eighth among NHL defensemen in points and 14th in power play points (13) while taking on the 12th-most minutes per game.
He is one of the very few players on this team who have earned an A rating.
Reinhart has been streaky, to say the least.
When he is on, he can create offense in nearly any way possible and produces at large clips — for example, his four-game goal streak in mid-December. He put up eight points while crashing the net hard and making solid passes with all-around solid play.
But he has not been able to do it as consistently as he did last year when he had 82 points in 78 games and that has been the kicker for him this year.
While the sample size is not large, Smith has been a fine addition since being acquired via trade on Dec. 19.
He isn’t expected to put up many points, but he is a hard forechecker and brings a lot of energy to the lineup. He has gelled pretty nicely on the fourth line since the Panthers decided to play Cousins further up the lineup.
While it took Staal while to get going offensively, he was doing all of the right things on the defensive end since returning from a one-year hiatus from the NHL.
Staal was killing penalties, forechecking hard and playing a strong defensive game for the most part while getting his legs underneath him.
Once the month switched to December, he went into overdrive. His 13 points in 18 games are tied for second on the team while he has continued to do the things that helped build his confidence to that point. Even at 38, Staal is still a very effective player in this league.
The junior Staal was struggling massively early in the season — boasting a minus-eight plus/minus while being beaten on numerous occasions — but has since settled into a somewhat reliable commodity on the defensive end.
He is a team-leading plus-five since the start of December and has begun to make stops on plays where he was previously blown past. He is quietly turning into a player the Panthers could get some value for should they choose to sell at the deadline.
While he did not get much time in the NHL before he sustained an upper-body injury of his own, Tierney was one of the best injury fill-ins the Panthers had in December.
The chemistry with Dalpe showed early when the duo each scored in their first two games together, but he has not returned to the Florida lineup since his injury. He is back with the team now after a conditioning game with the Checkers, so perhaps he is worth another look soon.
Tkachuk is the lone A-plus on this team for a reason. He is able to do pretty much anything on the ice and he does it well at a consistent clip.
He is currently tied for eighth in the league in points and 17th in goals.
Stop saying that the trade that brought him to Sunrise is the reason why they are out of the playoffs — because it’s not.
I was debating giving Verhaeghe an A-plus here, but as I said earlier, I grade down.
Still, he has had himself a career season. He is already five goals off from breaking his career-high in goals and has been one of the few players to bring a consistent effort to the rink night in and night out.
He has created a slew of chances with his speed and has been a perfect complement to Tkachuck’s all-around game that is ripe with physicality. When Tkachuk passes it, he is usually in the right spots and he has one heck of a shot.
With the small amount of cap space the Panthers had during the offseason, they needed to find a player to plug into the top nine and they figured White could have been the guy on a one-year, $1.2 million ‘prove-it’ deal.
It looked like he was off to a strong start after putting up 11 points in his first 18 games, but he has since dropped off to just one assist in his last 19.
The truth about White is that he is very reliant on his linemates to produce points and that does not translate much when his team is struggling. He does not do a whole lot off the puck to warrant any optimism moving forward.