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Why Florida Panthers down year could be best possible thing for franchise
Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice coaches against the New York Islanders during the first period at UBS Arena. Brad Penner-Imagn Images

Why Florida Panthers down year could be best possible thing for franchise

By Adam Gretz  |  Last updated Mar 31, 2026 7:16 PM ET

After appearing in three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals, and winning each of the past two, the Florida Panthers entered the 2025-26 season as major favorites to get back this season and potentially pull off the NHL's first three-peat in more than 40 years. 

But as the regular season reaches its stretch run, it is clear that is not going to happen and the Panthers are going to completely miss the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

It is a stunning reversal, and also one that is easily explainable when you dig down below the record.

It is also potentially the best thing that could have happened for the long-term outlook of the franchise and its potential for even longer-term success. 

Especially if some NHL Draft Lottery balls fall in their favor in the spring. 

Panthers are in rare position to potentially add young superstar to contending roster

The Panthers' failure this season has little to do with quality of the team or the work the front office has done in building it.

It is almost entirely the result of injuries. A lot of them. To some of the team's best players.

Before the season even began, superstar center Aleksander Barkov, one of the league's best two-way players, was ruled out for most, if not all, of the season due to an ACL injury he suffered in training camp. 

That followed the announcement that Matthew Tkachuk was going to miss at least the first half of the season due to his own offseason surgery.

Barkov and Tkachuk are not only the Panthers' two best players; they are two of the best players in hockey and the foundation of everything Florida did over the past few seasons. Overcoming that was always going to be an issue. 

But the injuries did not stop there, and have not stopped since.

Head coach Paul Maurice announced on Tuesday that it is unlikely that any of Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Brad Marchand, Anton Lundell and Evan Rodrigues will return for any of the Panthers' remaining games, adding to the number of games they have already missed. All of those players, and Tkachuk, were some of the biggest contributors to their past two championship teams.

Their absences have sent the Panthers to the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, ahead of only the New York Rangers, and near the bottom of the NHL standings as a whole.

Given the way they have played over the past few weeks, winning just seven of their past 20 games going into play on Tuesday, there is a chance for more losses on the horizon, which could only push them further down the standings.

Moving further down the standings means moving up the NHL Draft Lottery odds. And this is a mighty good year to have good Draft Lottery odds. 

Penn State's Gavin McKenna is the prize in the 2026 NHL Draft class, but he is far from the only potential franchise player in the class. Scouts and draft experts believe there could be as many as five or six superstar-level players in this year's class, and the Panthers might be positioned to land one of them. That would be an almost unprecedented stroke of good luck for a team with this much recent success. 

This season is almost certainly an injury-driven fluke. Given a fresh start next season with all of their best players healthy, the Panthers should almost certainly be a contending team again from the very beginning. And they could be doing so with a potential superstar as one of their key building blocks for the next decade. 

It might be a frustrating year for Panthers fans to sit through, but it could result in them getting the next foundational piece that could help them seamlessly transition from the Barkov era into a new era in the future without ever missing a beat. Add in the fact they have seen two recent championships (and a third championship-round appearance), that seems like a pretty good trade-off, and one they should happily take. 

While the Panthers did trade their 2026 first-round pick to the Chicago Blackhawks at last year's NHL trade deadline for defenseman Seth Jones, the pick was conditional and top-10 protected. With the Panthers looking like a potential top-10 team this season, that means they will keep the pick and send their 2027 first-round pick to Chicago instead. That pick will almost certainly be significantly lower.

Adam Gretz

Adam Gretz is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh. He covers the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA. Baseball is his favorite sport -- he is nearly halfway through his goal of seeing a game in every MLB ballpark. Catch him on X @AGretz

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