Despite Bruins loss, Panthers in playoff spot at Thanksgiving and making ‘considerable strides’

One of the first unofficial key dates of the NHL season has arrived, and the Florida Panthers are thankful to find themselves in good standing.

In the NHL’s salary cap era (since the 2005-06 season), teams who hold a playoff position on Thanksgiving morning have made the playoffs about 76 percent of the time. This excludes the 2019-2020 season which was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the shortened 2021 season and the lockout-shortened 2013 season, both of which started their seasons after Thanksgiving.

“The underlying reason for it,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said, “is three-quarters of the teams that are above that bar happen to be a really good hockey teams, and that’s probably not going to change very much.”

Even after a 3-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, Florida entered the Thanksgiving holiday with a 12-6-1 record that has them second in the Atlantic Division only behind the Bruins (14-1-3). Their 25 points are the third most overall in the Eastern Conference behind only the Bruins and Metropolitan-leading New York Rangers (13-3-1).

At Thanksgiving last season, the Panthers were in fifth place in the Atlantic and one point back of a wild card spot. They wound up squeaking into the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed and making a magical run all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.

“We look so much closer to our end product last year than we did at this time last year,” Maurice said. “We’ve made considerable strides.”

Those strides have been seen in full effect this month. After starting the season 4-3-1, Florida is an NHL-best 8-3-0 so far in November. Six of those wins have come in regulation, and the Panthers outscoring opponents 36-29 this month.

“The last month has been very good for us,” Panthers center Anton Lundell said. “We had a slow start, but then we found our game. The last 10 games, we’ve been really good and we can be proud of that. Just trying to improve even more.”

And the Panthers have been tested.

Of their 19 games played overall, 17 have been decided by two goals or fewer (Florida is 11-5-1 in those games and 10 have been against teams who made the playoffs last year (Florida is 5-4-1 in those games — 5-3-0 when removing the two games against Boston).

Even more than that, they have only played two periods with their team at full strength. Defensemen Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad missed the first 16 games of the season before making their season debuts on Nov. 17 against the Anaheim Ducks. In that game, captain and top-line center Aleksander Barkov left with a knee injury in the opening minute of the third period and has missed the past two games.

“To be able to win against good teams with whoever we have in a lineup is a big key,” said Lundell, who has assumed top-line center duties the past two games with Barkov out.

But while the Panthers are in a good position right now with nearly a quarter of the season completed, Maurice isn’t letting his team get too complacent yet. There’s a lot of hockey left to play.

“I still feel that we’re early on in establishing ourselves as one of those teams,” Maurice said. “That doesn’t mean we lack confidence. We just don’t have five years of [playoff experience] yet, right? We still put up trying to prove it every day.”