Why the Florida Panthers are in good shape to contend again in the playoffs

While all the attention in the Eastern Conference is focused on the teams fighting for the final playoff spots, the teams that they’re poised to play in the first round have much higher hopes, and are looking to make runs for a Stanley Cup. The Western Conference has a much deeper pool of elite teams, but the East has its fair share of contenders too.

The Boston Bruins and New York Rangers both have star power, excellent goaltending, and a solid defense core, but while they’ve been the most consistent teams in the conference so far, they also have the most flaws under the hood. Meanwhile, the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes haven’t been quite as consistent, but look a lot more poised to go on a long run with the way their team is built. Even teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs or Tampa Bay Lightning have the potential to make noise, even if they aren’t the same teams that they’ve been in past years.

With an interesting group of contenders in the East, Frank Seravalli talked about his pick for the top team in the conference on Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: A lot of people view the New York Rangers as being a flawed team. I kind of view the Boston Bruins as that too. I think they’ve probably had their goaltending cover up a lot of their issues this year. There’s some interesting data from Sportlogiq yesterday, which indicated that, had the Bruins gotten league average goaltending, they would be closer to 96 points right now.

I really like the Florida Panthers and I really like the Carolina Hurricanes. Not to say that someone else is incapable of beating those two teams, but I just think Florida has this unique blend of size and talent and meanness that I think just makes for chaos in the playoffs. So if I had to label one team, Florida would be mine.

You can watch the full episode here…