Colby Guy
The Florida Panthers have been a mixed bag through the first quarter of the 2022-23 NHL season.
They currently sit 10-8-2 and are three points outside of a playoff spot going into Saturday’s game against the visiting St. Louis Blues.
Over the last 20 years, 80 percent of teams in a playoff spot through the first quarter of a season eventually made the playoffs.
The Panthers are not worried about that.
After all, Florida leads the league in shots per game (40.4) and are second in scoring chances (780) but have not had the finishing touch it would like overall.
“We don’t feel that our record is indicative of the game that we have played,” first-year coach Paul Maurice said.
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“We would suggest that if you did not look at the final score and look at the analytics, we should be sitting in the top five in a lot of categories and we feel like our best hockey is ahead of us.”
There has been a lot of good to come from Maurice’s first 20 games as head coach but there are some concerns as well.
Some of which Maurice does not have any control over.
Here are a few takeaways from the first quarter of the Panthers’ season:
Matthew Tkachuk Fits In Just Fine
The Panthers made an all-out push to acquire Matthew Tkachuk when they found out he was going to be available in July and it has paid off in spades so far.
Tkachuk leads all Florida forwards in assists (18) and points (27) and ranks Top 10 across the league in both categories.
He also has the most points by a player who switched teams during the 2022 offseason, edging out Detroit’s Dominik Kubalik by six points.
He has fit like a glove on the right side of Carter Verhaeghe and Sasha Barkov on the top line but has played well with just about anyone the Panthers have put him out there with.
His unique ability to make plays with both his strength and silky hands makes him impossible for opposing offenses to stop and he has carried Florida at times.
The Panthers paid a steep price with franchise faces Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar heading the other way, but Tkachuk looks to have been well worth the price.
Spencer Knight Looks Like a Starter
The tale of Florida’s season, so far, has been told many a night by its goaltending.
Sergei Bobrovsky — who started the season as the Panthers’ No. 1 goalie after leading the NHL in wins last year — has stumbled out of the gate to the tune of a 4-5-1 record with a .888/3.62 in 11 starts this season.
Meanwhile, 21-year-old Spencer Knight has a 6-3-1 record with a .922/2.39 through nine starts and a relief appearance.
While a lot of the goals he has allowed have been a result of some untimely giveaways, Bobrovsky is not making the big saves that the Panthers were expecting to see from him when they inked him to a seven-year, $70 million contract in 2019.
Knight has been stronger in high-danger situations and has matured to the point where he rarely gets rattled if he lets one past him.
Florida’s rotation is already much closer to 50 percent than it was last season with the Panthers slowly trending towards trusting Knight with a bigger bulk of starts.
At this point, it may be getting close to the time he is called Florida’s No. 1 goalie.
The Staal Experiment is 50/50 — At Best
With the Panthers up against the cap ceiling, Bill Zito had to plug in multiple holes with not a lot of room to work with during the offseason.
He tried to remedy that by signing veteran defenseman Marc Staal — and eventually Eric Staal — to matching one-year, $750,000 contracts.
That experiment has backfired at times.
Marc, who Florida signed on the first day of free agency to plug a hole on its blue line, has been more of a liability at times.
The 35-year-old has had multiple defensive breakdowns lead to goals and currently stands with just one assist and is at minus-eight.
The Panthers have only been able to carry 20 skaters in order to stay under the cap ceiling, so they are effectively forced to play him every night with no replacement on the roster.
Eric — who signed his deal when cap space was freed up while Aaron Ekblad was on long-term injured reserve — has at least helped the Panthers on the penalty kill.
His play 5-on-5 has been a different story, as he has not registered a point through his first 13 games, but his penalty-killing has made him serviceable as a player on a cheap, one-year deal.
Florida was forced to waive Rudolfs Balcers in order to keep him on the roster upon Ekblad’s return, but Staal’s impact on the penalty kill warranted that decision to be made.
Balcers had just two goals and four points in 14 games as a Panther and could not find a fit in their offense.
Still, Eric and Marc came to Florida as a package deal and the Panthers got maybe 25 percent of what they would have wanted out of players on league-minimum contracts.
With the Panthers not having any healthy scratches to give both veteran players some rest, this could get ugly.
Surprise Starts from Mahura and Montour Bolster Defense
When Weegar was included in the Tkachuk trade, the immediate concern was how the Panthers’ defense would fare without much room to improve.
A breakout season from Brandon Montour and a surprise waiver claim in Josh Mahura have effectively silenced those doubts for the Panthers.
Montour took off when Ekblad was out of the lineup, leading all defensemen in assists (11) and coming second amongst blueliners in points (14) in 10 games while Florida’s franchise defenseman was out of the lineup.
He formed a formidable pair with Gus Forsling and helped the Panthers to a 6-3-1 record in that span.
The real aberration, though, is Mahura.
A castaway from the Anaheim Ducks days before the season started, Mahura has quietly been one of the most defensively-sound puck-moving defensemen in the league.
He has found chemistry with Radko Gudas on a paring that logged heavy minutes in Ekblad’s absence while ranking high in both public and private models analytically in the defensive zone.