Florida Panthers: 2025/2026 review
Florida missed the playoffs for the first time since 2018-19, ending a run of three straight Stanley Cup Finals and back-to-back titles. One word covers most of it: injuries. Aleksander Barkov lost the entire season to major knee surgery on day one of training camp. Matthew Tkachuk sat out the first 47 games. Brad Marchand spent chunks of the year slowed down too. A brutal drop, sure, but one written in the training room rather than in any real erosion of talent.
Key numbers
2025-2026 record: 40-38-4 (251 goals for, 276 against)
2025-2026 NHL finish: 7th in the Atlantic Division
Top scorer 2025-2026: Sam Reinhart (29)
Top assister 2025-2026: Sam Reinhart (32)
Top points scorer 2025-2026: Sam Reinhart (61)
Average age of roster (2026-2027): 30.5 years
Available cap space (2026-2027): -$0.90M
Recent moves (off-season)
Arrivals:
- Brady Tkachuk (F)
- Garnet Hathaway (F)
- Radko Gudas (D)
- Akira Schmid (G)
- Jacob Markstrom (G)
- Lars Eller (F)
Departures:
- Mackie Samoskevich (F)
- AJ Greer (F)
- Evan Rodrigues (F)
- Jesper Boqvist (F)
- Sergei Bobrovsky (G)
- Daniil Tarasov (G)
No first-round pick until 2030
Florida Panthers – Future contracts and draft picks
Most clubs answer a first playoff miss in seven years by pulling back. Florida did the opposite and put together one of the boldest summers in the league. The Brady Tkachuk trade, which cost Ottawa the 2026 ninth and 25th picks plus future assets, puts the Tkachuk brothers in the same lineup for the first time. Brady has two years left on his deal.
The Bobrovsky era is over. The veteran signed in Toronto, and Jacob Markstrom arrives from New Jersey to take the crease. The core, though, barely moved. Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett are all signed long term, which is unusual stability for a team coming off a genuine wobble.
The bill is sitting in the draft cupboard. No first-round pick before 2030 at the earliest, the accumulated cost of several summers spent buying the present, this year’s Tkachuk deal included. Bill Zito is not hiding the logic. After a season wrecked by the medical staff’s workload rather than any decline, Florida still thinks this group wins when it is on the ice.
Back to health, not back to talent
Florida never stopped having enough talent to win. It just lost access to most of it for the better part of a year. Barkov, who did not play a single regular-season game, then went and led Finland to the world title in May, finishing as the tournament’s leading scorer after all that time away.
Matthew Tkachuk came back from 47 games out and, by his teammates’ account, picked up close to where he had left off. Add Brady and the attack gets meaner. The brothers could form one of the league’s most punishing lines, or split duty alongside Barkov and Sam Reinhart, who dragged the offense along by himself last season with 61 points. Bennett and Marchand, both hurt at different points, fill out a group that on paper is still among the deepest anywhere.
So the talent question answers itself. The other one does not. Can this organization stay out of the treatment room long enough to prove any of it across 82 games?
Player to watch: Brady Tkachuk (F)
Brady and Matthew Tkachuk had talked about playing together since they were kids. They also dropped the gloves against each other twice when Ottawa met Florida, then won Olympic gold side by side last winter before finally landing in the same room. Paul Maurice has not put them on the same line, though. Brady opens on the top unit with Barkov and Reinhart while Matthew stays with Bennett.
That spreads the nastiness across two lines instead of loading it all into one. Brady brings two years of contract, a reputation for getting under skin and a genuine finishing touch. Whether his style, built on contact and agitation, settles into a room he has called one of the tightest in the league is the one thing nobody can predict.
2026-2027 target
Florida Panthers projected lines 2026-2027
The target is not complicated. Get back to the Stanley Cup, and treat the playoff miss as the outlier the club believes it was. Zito and Maurice are betting on healthy bodies plus Brady Tkachuk to rebuild the formula that produced three straight Final appearances.
Outside the building, the doubt is real. One anonymous GM made the point that a full recovery from an ACL tear tends to take around 18 months to properly land, not a summer. That leaves a question mark hanging over Barkov, world title in May or not.
In practice it comes down to steadier goaltending with Markstrom, a heavier forward group with the Tkachuks, and the hope that last year’s injury list was bad luck rather than a warning. A playoff return, or a deep run, and the window is still open. A second straight year out and the conversation turns to the age and durability of this core, no excuses accepted.
My prediction
Florida finishes near the top. Last season was gutted by injuries and they still put up 87 points. A healthy year with this roster should be aiming at first place, and I have them second only because, as I wrote in my Canadiens piece, I see Montreal taking that spot. Second is second. This is a team that can win the whole thing.
Photo credit: wallpapersafari.com | cdyer
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