The Florida Panthers are starting to make some headway in the Eastern Conference standings thanks to a very strong couple of weeks.
Wednesday night’s 3-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings was Florida’s sixth in their past seven games.
The victory improved the Cats’ record to 18-13-2, and their 38 points are one point back of both the second Wild Card spot and, perhaps more importantly, one point back of third place in the Atlantic Division.
Interestingly, the Atlantic is so tightly packed, the first-place Detroit Red Wings have 41 points, so only three more than the Panthers, and Florida has two games in hand.
It certainly looks like the Panthers are setting themselves up for a very happy holiday.
Let’s get to Wednesday’s takeaways:
A TOUGH HOME WIN
Ask any coach or any player…the first game back home after a long road trip is never an easy one to win.
Florida had just played four away games in six nights, all against playoff teams at the time (Utah has since fallen out of a playoff spot), and come away with six of a possible eight points.
Returning home to face a strong Kings squad who were quite hungry themselves after having a four-game point streak snapped Monday in Dallas, the Panthers certainly had their work cut out for them.
Florida survived a strong push by LA at the start before slowly but surely turning momentum in their favor, getting back to the basics that have driven their recent success away from home.
“This was a tough one tonight to come back off the road, and I think the other team, especially at the start, played exceptionally well,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “I think the road team has the advantage in this situation, and we found a way to win a game. We're in that mode. We're not looking for perfection right now.”
DEPTH AND HEALTH
The Panthers have spent much of this season trying to find ways to succeed in their systems despite having an extremely depleted lineup.
Between the injuries piling up and Carter Verhaeghe missing a game due to the birth of his child, things came to a head earlier this month as Florida dropped five of six, all on home ice.
Then Verhaeghe came back and Eetu Luostarinen returned, and suddenly the Cats’ depth received a nice boost.
They’ve now won six of seven and have points in seven of eight.
“At the start of the month, we got beat by Toronto,” Maurice said. “We get beat. But (Carter) Verhaeghe and (Eetu) Luostarinen were out, and that made our number (of healthy forwards) eight, and when you get to that number, you're going to have a hard time. And then Carter’s wife had the baby, and the next night he came in, and we got a point and we played a little bit better. And then Luostarinen came back into our lineup, so now you're back to a more manageable number of injuries.”
A LOSS TO BE LEARNED FROM
Florida’s only defeat over the past couple weeks came on the second night of a back-to-back against the NHL’s best team.
It was an incredibly difficult turnaround for Florida, who had to endure a two-hour time change in addition to steep elevation changes when traveling from Fort Lauderdale to Salt Lake City and then to Denver, and playing games on consecutive nights in those environments on top of it.
Panthers’ defenseman Aaron Ekblad said a couple days later that it was possibly the most challenging back-to-back set of his career.
It showed on the ice, as Florida followed up a victory in Utah with an embarrassing 6-2 drubbing at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche.
Maurice and his Panthers didn’t let the defeat deter them off the path they had begun to walk and continued pushing toward better and more consistent play, instead using the loss as motivation and learning from what went wrong.
“I think we'd started to play better, and then we got pounded by Colorado, and there was just a lot of things that we don't do, but it almost was a blessing in disguise,” said Maurice. “(Playing on a) back-to-back, it exposed everything. From that point on, we've been better, much better. We gave up more than we wanted to give up tonight, for sure, but I think that's a function of context, because the Dallas game and the Tampa Bay game were played pretty darn well.”
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Photo caption: Nov 13, 2025; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Florida Panthers left wing Brad Marchand (63) celebrates with teammates after reaching his 1000th career point on an assists to center Eetu Luostarinen (27) for a goal against the Washington Capitals during the third period at Amerant Bank Arena. (Sam Navarro-Imagn Images)