Daily Faceoff Live: Do the Florida Panthers ‘lead the league in bad luck’?

Former Toronto Maple Leafs front office analyst Cam Charron joined Daily Faceoff‘s Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna for another “Number Crunch” segment on Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live.

The Florida Panthers have gotten off to an underwhelming start to the 2022–23 season, ranking fifth in the NHL’s Atlantic Division with a 14–12–4 record through 30 games. In a recent NHL.com article, Panthers general manager Bill Zito suggested his team might “lead the league in bad luck.”

In his conversation with Seravalli and McKenna, Charron shared his response to Zito’s claim and also made his pick for the NHL’s most unlucky team through the first two months of the season.

Cam Charron: I wouldn’t count the Panthers among those teams. I’m happy that you were able to talk about the Ottawa Senators earlier on in the segment because, to me, they’ve been a team that is one that should probably be a lot closer to the playoffs than they are just based on their goals for and goals against. Not counting empty nets and regulation only, I actually have the Senators being plus three in goal differential in those situations and, as a result, they should probably be a lot closer to .500, a lot closer to the playoff line.

I don’t have Florida as very strong at all so far this season. They’ve only outscored their opponents by four in those situations. I haven’t really watched the Panthers close enough to be able to know if they’ve really earned that, it’s really tough to tell based on available NHL data whether teams should be scoring more goals than they’ve taken or allowed fewer than they’ve actually got, but goals for and goals against, at this point in the season, is a good-enough measure to determine team quality. And from this, the Panthers haven’t really distinguished themselves.

Check out the full episode here: