What changed for Florida from 2023 to 2024?

[RevengeOfTheDrai]

With Florida’s playstyle, the Oilers should be averaging about four power plays a game. So to answer, Florida got away with a lot last year, and nobody can get away with a lot against Vegas.

 

[The Hockey Tonk Man]

It's more than likely been mentioned, but injuries have to be a major one.

 

[I am not exposed]

It's more than likely been mentioned, but injuries have to be a major one.

The main reason.

 

[NVious]

They got lucky Drai was hurt and McDavid single handedly pushed them to the brink of the worst collapse in sports history.

Tonight their luck runs out.

 

[Dread Clawz]

Time to adjust to focusing on the defensive side of the game. They were a run and gun team during the 2021-2022 season. It took all the next season get the mentality of a defensive team.

Yup, plus the additions of Mikkola, OEL, and Kulikov on the backend. That was a great blueline.

 

[Dread Clawz]

They got lucky Drai was hurt and McDavid single handedly pushed them to the brink of the worst collapse in sports history.

Tonight their luck runs out.

Luck is a part of winning. You have to have a lot of things go your way, health being one of them.
We were banged up in '23. Deal with it.

 

[SeanMoneyHands]

Vegas was unstoppable in 2023. Adin Hill easily could have won the Conn Smythe, he caught fire at the perfect time for Vegas. He will never repeat that kind of performance again in his career. Marchessault was scoring all the clutch goals for them after round 1 (where he was pretty quiet).

 

[avocadosmoothie]

their opponent's mega star wasn't playing with one arm?

 

[Matty Sundin]

Bob finally getting over being a playoff choker in 2023 and not looking back since, they gained a ton of experience that year and got more hungry, they realized you can’t win a cup with garbage players even if you stuff them on your 4th line.

 

[lawrence]

Oilers have beaten the Panthers 4 out of the past 5 times they met in the playoffs.

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

Outside of better health, what changed was their roster got better.

22-23 Panthers barely made the playoffs. They went into the season having to ice minimum rosters (few times even 1 man short) due to being up against the cap despite losing talent from the previous season. They made the necessary changes with the blockbuster trade at the cost of overall team depth. I don't know if the off-season overall went as planned, but yeah they weren't in a great spot to start the season from a roster flexibility standpoint.

I even predicted them to be a 50/50 playoff team despite the huge drop off in points needed for that to happen. And that's pretty much what it was. If the Pens didn't lose to bottom tier teams in the last week or two the Panthers late season push didn't even matter.

- Old man Marc Staal was playing 2nd pair and Josh Mahura was a regular. The dmen they've iced over those guys since have been a massive improvement.
- Nick Cousins was stapled in the top 9. He shouldn't be on a contender. Sometimes he even played 2nd line.
- Rodrigues over Duclair has been an improvement in the playoffs (Erod has 27 playoff pts in these 2 runs and is more versatile)
- Reinhart took another step after the season
- They didn't add anything meaningful at the trade deadline, but since then they've added guys like Tarasenko and Marchand

It was a great run for the Panthers, but they weren't a cup champ caliber team and Vegas was just way better. The injuries made the finals even worse.

It was a transition year necessary in the big picture and the playoff success was just gravy. Since then the expectations have been at a different level and rightfully so.

 

[Dabeast]

More depth, better health, more time to adjust to Maurice's system

 

[Ratsreign]

Tne checks (cheques) for the refs got bigger

 

[MVP of West Hollywd]

23 has a better Tkachuk and Montour, so that they got better in 24 anyway shows the rest of their team improved. The Barkov line got better, forward depth like Lundell improving and adding Rodrigues (most pts in finals), and bottom 3 defenseman of OEL, Mikkola, Kulikov is solid whereas it fell off in 23.

Furthermore Maurice was a big change from Brunette's system so with another year and with those changes they were able to perfect their structure making them able to control the game and be hardest to score on in the league. Forsling has the most pts for defenseman in 24 and Ekblad has the most this year so they don't have to rely on a defenseman being as aggressive as Montour was in 23 when his pts total are ok but he tied for the 2nd most goals and looked dynamic imo.

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Additional game management.

 

[Ratsreign]

They went from really good to even better.

 

[WaitingForThatCab]

I see we've already mentioned that our checks cleared. Carry on.