The potential and peril the Panthers’ surprising playoff run offers the Islanders

Already on breakup day, some Islanders were bringing up the Panthers as an example of how they could find lightning in a bottle, should they stay the course.

Three weeks later, with Florida stunningly sweeping its way to the Stanley Cup Final, you can bet that the Panthers will be brought up regularly next season by any team that will be fighting for a playoff spot.

“I just think that the margin in this league is very small,” Matt Martin said on breakup day. “You need to click at the right time. … We’re sitting here today, I don’t think the Boston Bruins thought they would be out in the first round. But the Florida Panthers are a good hockey team. I don’t think Boston’s a bad team or a failure because they lost. There’s momentum swings, there’s things that happen in games that change the outlook.

“So I think as a team, we’re right there. … We’re confident as a group we can get the job done.”

To an extent, it’s true. Hockey is a sport where just getting into the playoffs gives you a real shot at making a run because teams do get hot at the right time or ride a great goaltender in the playoffs.

And the Islanders did finish one point ahead of the Panthers in the standings over 82 games. So why not use Florida’s run as reason to believe they can do the same?

A month ago, who would have guessed the Panthers would be celebrating in the Eastern Conference finals?Getty Images

Remember, the Islanders made the conference finals in 2020 with a 35-23-10 record over the abbreviated regular season — far from world-beaters, they would have missed the playoffs under normal circumstances.

The Panthers are taking a page out of the playbook of the 2012 Kings, who won the Cup as a No. 8 seed, then won another title two years later.

Strange things do happen.

But to a pretty large extent, you make your own luck in sports.

Going into this season, the Panthers had three straight regular seasons that ended with disappointing playoff runs, including a 58-18-6 President’s Trophy-winning team last season that was unceremoniously swept out of the second round by the Lightning.

After the Panthers followed up a 58-win season with an early playoff exit last year, general manager Bill Zito (l.) brought in coach Paul Maurice and traded two of the club’s stars.Getty Images

In response, general manager Bill Zito executed a series of bold offseason moves that included letting interim coach Andrew Brunette go after he had compiled a 51-18-6 record following Joel Quenneville’s firing (due to fallout from the Kyle Beach scandal), and trading superstar center Jonathan Huberdeau and young standout defenseman MacKenzie Weegar to Calgary in a trade that brought back Matthew Tkachuk.

Tkachuk, a Hart Trophy finalist, is now at the center of Florida’s success, with 21 points in 16 playoff games, including overtime winners in Games 1 and 2 of the conference finals and a final-five-seconds winner in Game 4, with an absurd 73.68 goals-for rate at five-on-five.

Though Connor McDavid may win the Hart unanimously, Tkachuk’s case for second place is he truly may have had more of an on-ice impact than any player in the league, with a 61.46 expected-goals rate and 64.03 goals-for rate during the regular season at five-on-five, for a team that scored just 54.57 percent of its goals at five-on-five.

Trading Weegar also opened the door for Brandon Montour’s ice time to rise by more than seven minutes per game, which Montour parlayed into a 73-point season. He currently leads the playoffs in shots on goal.

In short: The Panthers did exactly what the Islanders have refused to do in trading major pieces of their core — after a significantly better season than the Isles had in 2021-22 or 2022-23, no less. A direct comparison between them that doesn’t include that is disingenuous.

Matthew Tkachuk’s offensive explosion has powered the Panthers in the playoffs as a No. 8 seed.Getty Images

Of course, these are two different teams in two different situations, and the Islanders did add a superstar in Bo Horvat just four months ago. Horvat, though, scored just seven goals in 30 regular-season games with the Islanders and had just one goal in the series against Carolina.

The positive part of the comparison for the Isles is the Panthers would not be in their current position without an influx of good goaltending. Sergei Bobrovsky’s underperformance during the regular season was a consistent enough problem that he lost the starting job to Alex Lyon down the stretch. Lyon’s play helped Florida secure a playoff spot.

In the postseason, though, Bobrovsky has an absurd .935 save percentage, and was near-impenetrable in the conference finals, stopping 168 of 174 shots (.966).

That is an advantage the Islanders already have in abundance with Ilya Sorokin.

Goaltending, though, is where the direct similarities between the Isles and Panthers begin and end.

Florida is built around its scoring, with a better than average power play, defensemen who can move the puck and high-octane offensive players in Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe.

Ilya Sorokin is a clear building block for the Islanders.Corey Sipkin for the NY Post

The Islanders are built from the back out, emphasizing defense and structure. Their power play was a constant problem last season, as was a lack of scoring.

Brock Nelson is the only Islanders player who would have ranked in the top five in scoring on Florida’s roster this season.

That is not to say the Islanders are incapable of getting hot in the playoffs and making a run, should the opportunity arise. Anything’s possible.

But it is to put a dent in the inevitable comparison between the two.

Outdoor history

With the news that the Islanders will face the Rangers in February 2024 at MetLife Stadium, it is noteworthy that the occasion will be just over 10 years on from the Isles’ only other outdoor game, also against the Blueshirts, at Yankee Stadium.

The Rangers won that contest, 2-1, with Nelson scoring the lone goal for the Islanders. Martin, Cal Clutterbuck, Casey Cizikas and Josh Bailey also took the ice in that match for the Isles; Chris Kreider was the lone current Ranger to play in the 22-degree weather that night.

The Islanders and Rangers will meet up outside next season for the first time since they tangled at Yankee Stadium in 2014.Getty Images

Since the Rangers’ lease with Madison Square Garden precludes them from being the home team in a Stadium Series game, the Islanders will presumably host just one game against their archrivals at UBS Arena for the second straight season. (Such an outcome could be avoided with an 84-game schedule, if that is adopted next season.)

If only there were a venue on Long Island, perhaps sharing the same parking lot as UBS Arena, with 33,000 seats, that could be considered for hosting an Islanders outdoor home game so that “home” fans didn’t have to drive more than an hour across state lines. They could even use the venue’s overall capacity, totaling over 100,000, to host a concert or other events to boost interest in the hockey game.

Wouldn’t that be great?

It’s too bad such a venue doesn’t exist.

More silence

By our count, every single team that is not currently still in the playoffs has had members of hockey leadership speak to reporters, except one. No prizes for guessing which.

Neither Lou Lamoriello nor any Islanders executive has spoken to the media since the season ended in the first round.Getty Images

The only team we could find in which the designated speaker was not the general manager was the Penguins, who fired their GM, Ron Hextall, and conducted a press conference with Fenway Sports Group co-head and alternate governor Dave Beeston along with head of business operations Kevin Acklin.

It also is standard procedure across the league for the head coach to talk after the end of the season.

Apparently, the Islanders are exempt from such outdated traditions as communicating with their fans.