Will it get late early for the Florida Panthers?

Any team attempting to win a third Stanley Cup in as many years would be facing an uphill battle between the amount of fatigue from two long playoff runs setting in as well as a desperation gap between that team and everyone else in the league.

For this year’s iteration of the Florida Panthers, the difficulty level got cranked up, as they’ve had to play without perennial Selke favorite Aleksander Barkov and their best winger in Matthew Tkachuk.

The results have been a mixed bag so far, but as the all-important cutoff of American Thanksgiving approaches, the Panthers find themselves on the wrong side of the playoff bubble with a record 12-9-1. At the same time, they’re just two points away from leaping three teams and moving into a tie for second place in the Atlantic Division.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed whether or not the Panthers can continue to linger in a tight Atlantic Division or if they need to heat up before reinforcements arrive.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I know Florida is a team where everyone is like, “Ah, wait til they get healthy.” I mean if they get Matt Tkachuk back after Christmas in January, are they going to be able to make up that ground in half a season? I don’t think so.

Carter Hutton: I don’t think so either. There is confidence in that, and you look at the teams that are really close by… none of them really look like legit contenders, right? I’m still buyer beware on a lot of those teams. I would assume Florida gets going trending in the right direction. They pounded Nashville last night… But that being said, this is an experienced group. A team that started slow that’s finding themselves to get going.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…