Better luck next year: Things might work out even better for the Florida Panthers

The Florida Panthers had an unexpectedly bad season and that might work out even better for them.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Florida Panthers.

Writing about the Florida Panthers being eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention this early is not something I had planned for this season. I am not sure anybody did. But with their 9-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday, the Panthers were the fifth team to be mathematically eliminated and are now looking ahead to next season.

It is at this point where we talk about how not all bad seasons and bad teams are created equal. They do not follow the same path to get there.

Some teams are bad by design as part of a rebuild.

Some are bad through general incompetence, poor roster construction and poor team management.

Some are bad because everything goes wrong beyond your control.

The 2025-26 Panthers are absolutely in the latter category.

This was clearly not a rebuilding season, and it would be impossible to argue the team was assembled by an incompetent management given the most recent success. This is a team that has been in three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals, won two of them, and won a Presidents’ Trophy with the NHL’s best regular season record prior to that run of Stanley Cup appearances. Over the previous four years, literally nobody has been better than this group.

A lot of that core was supposed to be back this season.

The key phrase here being, “supposed to be back.”

Before the season even began they found out superstar forward Matthew Tkachuk was going to miss at least half of the season due to offseason surgery.

Then No. 1 center (and the team’s best overall player) Aleksander Barkov tore his ACL in practice and was going to be sidelined for the remainder of the season.

No matter how deep the roster is, and no matter how good the roster is, taking away two players of that caliber for that amount of games is going to be a problem.

The injuries did not stop there. By the end of the season the Panthers were playing with a roster that was primarily AHL call-ups due to Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell, Evan Rodrigues and Brad Marchand, among others, all being out of the lineup.

Add in some brutal goaltending for much of the season and there was just no overcoming it all. At least not this season.

That does not mean it is all bad for the Panthers.

Because the first-round pick they traded to the Chicago Blackhawks at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline for defenseman Seth Jones was top-10 protected, the Panthers will still have their first-round pick this season, and they will have it in a year where there are several potential difference-makers at the top of the class, including prized prospect Gavin McKenna.

As of Wednesday the Panthers’ pick would be sixth in the NHL, giving them a 7.5 percent chance at the No. 1 overall pick and a 7.7 percent chance at the No. 2 overall pick. Not overly high odds, but crazier things have happened in the lottery. They are also not that far off from playing their way into the top-five or top-four odds depending on what happens with their remaining games. Especially with the injuries, and especially with the way a team like the New York Rangers has decided to win some games down the stretch.

Imagine the Panthers coming back next season with a healthy Aleksander Barkov. A healthier Matthew Tkachuk. Better injury luck throughout the roster. Oh, and potentially a Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg or one of the other top prospects in a top-heavy class added into the organization.

Hard to be mad about that as a Panthers fan. You get back-to-back championships, have to sit through one bad luck season, and could potentially get your next superstar with a contending team still coming back.

Let’s talk about it.

What went right this season