It’s been a rough holiday week for the Florida Panthers.
Over the past few days, the Panthers have lost consecutive games on home ice for the first time this season, a pair of defeats that that bookend the Thanksgiving holiday.
Florida was outscored 9-5 in losses to the Philadelphia Flyers and Calgary Flames, with the latter defeat stinging a bit more due to the combination of familiar faces on the Flames bench and the poor record they arrived in Sunrise with.
Now the Cats get a few days to lick their wounds and figure out how to get back on the winning side of things.
Let’s get to Friday’s takeaways:
OVERCONFIDENT?
Things felt like they were going Florida’s way early in this one.
Before the first period was three minutes old, the Panthers already had a multi-goal lead.
Those two goals were on the team’s first two shots, but Florida failed to build on their momentum and instead allowed Calgary to get the game back to even by the second TV timeout.
For a team like Calgary that has struggled for much of the season but only recently started to find some consistency, they saw a window of opportunity to pounce on the Panthers and boy did they take it.
“When you score two like that, you think you're going to just generate all you want, and when that doesn't happen, you get some frustration built into your game,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “We didn't move the puck very easily tonight, but the expectation that we should isn't realistic. We would have to closer support, and probably suffer the things that frustrate us a little bit a little bit differently, a little change in mindset on what our expectations are every time we touch the puck.”
TOO MUCH MEAT ON BONE
Scoring three goals on 40 shots is usually a recipe for victory.
Three goals isn’t a ton, but recaching the 40-shot milestone generally indicates a night where you possessed the puck quite a bit, or at least enough to make a three-goal output stand up.
Unfortunately for the Panthers, that was not the case on Friday afternoon.
Flames goaltender Devin Cooley was outstanding, stopping eight of Florida’s 10 high danger shots and holding them to just the three goals on a day there the Panthers’ expected goals was 5.96.
It didn’t help that 31 of Florida’s shot attempts were blocked on their way to the net.
“We got 85 shot attempts. It's fine. You get 39 to the net, but you've left an awful lot of zone time,” said Maurice. “Some are good blocks. Their team gets paid too, and we have to be mindful of that. And then I thought, maybe two areas: There were one on one battles where we weren't quite as good as we will need to be to expect to win a game, and then a little slowness in our offensive game.”
GOOD TIME FOR DAYS OFF
After dropping back-to-back contests on home ice, the Panthers will get three days between games to (as their starting goaltender would say) reset, regroup and refocus.
While you never want to go into a period of off time on a down note, the positive is that this will give Maurice and his staff a chance to break down the areas they feel the team is struggling and deliver those adjustments to the team.
“You've got to take the chances that you have to recover, but at the same time, we got a whole bunch of stuff we got to work on and get better, so this will be a good chance for us to do that,” Maurice said.
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Photo caption: Nov 28, 2025; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Calgary Flames goaltender Devin Cooley (1) makes a save against Florida Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad (5) during the third period at Amerant Bank Arena. (Sam Navarro-Imagn Images)