The back-to-back Cup champion Panthers are sliding. They still believe that things can turn around

By Canadian Press on December 3, 2025.

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Panthers’ locker room has been a somber place after the past few home games, all of which were losses.

There has been no music blaring as players go through their postgame cycling workouts, no celebratory shouting, no happy banter.

Being in last place will do that to a team.

The back-to-back Stanley Cup champions — the three-time defending Eastern Conference champions — are ahead of exactly nobody right now on that side of the NHL. They’ve lost three straight overall, four in a row at home and have only 25 standings points through 25 games.

“There’s some frustration, for sure,” Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said. “A lot of things have gone right for us over the last few years and that certainly adds to it. We’ve been in this position before, but it’s going to be the guys in the room and the guys that are healthy that are going to have to get us out of it.”

There are some silver linings right now for the Panthers: nobody in the East entered Wednesday with more than 34 points so it’s not as if the conference race is getting away from them yet, the Panthers had only 28 points at this time three seasons ago when they wound up going to the Cup Final — and the team is missing many of its best players because of injuries. Among them: Matthew Tkachuk may return this month and Aleksander Barkov could be back by the end of the season.

“We have to have a bit of patience with what we’re doing,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “And then, we’ve got to get a little stronger performance out of a few guys because we just don’t have the margin for error.”

He was then asked if it’s hard to have that patience.

“Oh, yeah, it’s brutal,” Maurice said. “But we know what we’ve got, we know the situation that we’re in, and I think we all have enough experience to handle it.”

When the offense is clicking, the Panthers have looked very much like the back-to-back champs that they are: They’re 7-0-0 when scoring four or more goals. When the offense is sputtering, everything changes: They’re 5-13-1 when scoring three goals or fewer.

Not having Barkov, Tkachuk, Dmitry Kulikov, Eetu Luostarinen, Tomas Nosek and more has certainly taken a toll on the Panthers, as would be expected. But even amid a slump, the Panthers insist that their belief isn’t wavering.

Besides, even in the back-to-back Cup years, things didn’t always come easily to the Panthers, goalie Sergei Bobrovsky said.

“It’s never been smooth,” Bobrovsky said. “It’s never been smooth. It’s never been like we like dominate everybody, 5-0, 6-0. We were down, we were up. It’s hockey. There are good teams against us. They’re good players and good hockey clubs and it’s the challenge. We just have to be resilient and do our things.”

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Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press