From the Stephen Weiss situation to terrible goaltending to the Panthers being on pace to far and away lead the man-games lost due to injury, the laundry list of problems for this team is hard to grasp.
While the kids that have been called up from San Antonio have played admirably, this roster resembles the rosters when Pete DeBoer was in his last season as Florida's coach. The entire organizational system is being taxed because of these injuries on the big club.
Dmitri Kulikov, Mike Weaver, Scottie Upshall, Ed Jovanovski, Stephen Weiss, Sean Bergenheim, Michael Caruso, and Jose Theodore have been or are out for extended periods, and in several cases out for the season. That is after Kris Versteeg just came back from an injury sustained on a dirty hit from Alex Ovechkin on February 12th.
Needless to say the limping Cats have been average at best on the ice with half a regular squad. Another overtime loss, this time to Winnipeg, 3-2, Friday night makes them 1-6 in extra time. This heartbreaker came on the heels of an embarrassing 7-1 blowout loss at Washington the night before. As different as this roster looks from three and four years ago, the results sure look and feel the same.
There are several separate issues that I will be tackling over the next few days, all of which are alarming for this season and beyond. The so-called Blueprint created by GM Dale Tallon looks to have taken as large a step backwards this season as it took forward last year.
As depressing as it is, Panther fans eyes are looking towards the draft. This particular draft, especially the potential top 2 picks of Seth Jones and Jonathan Drouin, are great players to add to the mix on any team, but especially on a young squad like the Panthers where the nucleus will be even stronger.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There is still a little under half the season left to play and it will be interesting to see how the individual players react to being out of the playoff race early as well as "auditioning" for next year. It is sad that this is where Florida sits, but come next season it might all be worth it.
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Dan Spiegel...
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