I would not be surprised either. I'm a fan of the Panthers too.
There is a minor difference between the Sabres and the Avalanche. Mittlestadt is the one I expect to do the best once he is given whatever combination of Nichushkin, Landeskog, Lehkonen, and Drouin to play with instead of Kovalenko and O'Connor. Hes a ppg+ with those two. He should only be better with real players on his wings.
All Panthers are drastically outperforming themselves except Chuckie and Verhaeghe. Verhaeghe and Tkachuk will go up and Reinhart and Bennett will go down balancing out, but to assume Reinhart and Bennett stay there while Verhaghe and Thakchuk figure it out is not realistic. Barkov is doing better offensively than normal, but his D game is so good, he gets the benefit there.
A simple look at at shooting %'s and we can predict who will come down to earth and who will bounce back. The 13-14% is a good average for the leagues top scorers.
Reinhart% 26.3%
Bennett: 19.1%
Lundell: 19.4%
Barkov: 33.3%
Tkachuk: 12.5%
Verhaeghe: 3.9%
Mackinnon: 13.6%
Rantanen: 12.1%
Mittlestadt: 18.8%
Look back at this post when Mittlestadt is Kadri v2 and gets a big payday.
MacKinnon is drastically better than anyone on the Panthers and by a wide margin.
Comparing Barkov and Nichushkin if were going off last season isnt insane at all. Nuke is a near PPG player mostly 1st line minutes mostly and Barkov is slightly above ppg playing primarily top line minutes. Both are elite defensively. One is a center and other is a wing.
Tell me you dont watch Nichushkin without telling me you dont watch Nichushkin.
My whole point was we are assuming Reinhart is a 132 point player from this thread and Bennett is a PPG player, although he has never touched 50 so yes I am going to compare the best versions of the Avalanche. Obviously the whole premise was over your head.
And the entire post is me reaching complimenting FLA on indeed having the best top 4 and/or top 6 given the fact the Avs are the closest and two of those players are MIA currently.