After winning the Eastern Conference in each of the last two seasons — and capturing the franchise’s inaugural Stanley Cup championship last year — it’s hard to pinpoint a fatal flaw for a dominant postseason Florida Panthers team. Besides a behemoth Vegas Golden Knights squad in 2023, no club has been able to best the Cats after the regular-season since 2022. With the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs under a month away, the Panthers again look like one of the teams to beat in the East. The superstar core is still intact, led by captain Sasha Barkov and also featuring Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett. Although Tkachuk is on the injured list, there’s not much concern he won’t be ready for Game 1 of Round 1 come the middle of April. Along with one of the best offensive cores in the league, Florida also benefits from the experience, having played deep into the playoffs for two consecutive seasons. Panthers have top-tier offense, great depth and Sergei Bobrovsky Working for the Panthers is also the roster’s impressive depth. Rookie Mackie Samoskevich has emerged onto the scene with 13 goals and 26 points in 62 games in 2024-25, and he’s replaced a struggling Carter Verhaeghe on the top powerplay unit alongside Barkov, Reinhart and Bennett. As well, Brad Marchand should add a completely different aspect to the forward core come playoff time. A proven postseason performer, the veteran won the Stanley Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011 and was instrumental in the team coming within one victory of another in 2019. He was shockingly traded from the Bruins to the Panthers ahead of the March 7 NHL trade deadline and will make his team debut against the Utah Hockey Club on Friday night. The depth continues to show on the third line, with Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen and Jesper Boqvist forming great chemistry and becoming one of the better shutdown units in the NHL. Lundell and Luostarinen have also scored their fair share of clutch goals in each of the last two playoff runs. And, of course, one of the key catalysts is between the pipes in Sergei Bobrovsky. Despite some regular-season struggles — which seem to be a thing of the past — the Russian locks in come playoff time. In 2022-23, Bobrovsky won 12 of his 19 starts while posting a 2.78 goals-against average and .915 save percentage. Last year, he managed a 2.32 GAA and .906 SV%, winning the magic number 16 games while adding two shutouts along the way for good measure. The Panthers boast one of the premier playoff goalies in the world and an elite forward unit that has both superstar qualities and the ability to shut down other teams’ best players. Adding Marchand, along with a fantastic year from Bennett, should only make it deeper — and harder to play against — when the playoffs start in a couple of weeks. This is, again, a team that no one wants to play in the first-round. And that’s why the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning are desperate to win the Atlantic Division so that they can avoid the powerhouse Panthers. But there is one place that hasn’t been mentioned, and is a serious concern for Florida as it looks to go back-to-back in 2025: defense. This is the worst defensive unit Florida has had in years Amber Searls-Imagn Images Although Gustav Forsling is a certified star on the back end and will again be tasked with shutting down some of the best players in the league in the postseason, the Panthers’ blue line seems to get weaker every year. The most glaring problem is that Aaron Ekblad, who is also a crucial piece of the D-core, was suspended 20 games, without pay, for violating the terms of the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program. Ekblad will not be eligible to return to play until Game 3 of the first-round, and he will probably be thrown right into the fire as he looks to shake off the rust. As well, Dmitry Kulikov was injured earlier in March and labelled week-to-week. Although head coach Paul Maurice said he would be back before the end of the regular-season, the Russian hasn’t resumed skating and might not be quite as effective early on as he works to return to full health. The hope was that the addition of Seth Jones at the trade deadline would be just the tonic to shore up Florida’s blue line ahead of the stretch run. But the 12-year veteran, who spent three-and-a-half seasons struggling with the Chicago Blackhawks, hasn’t fared much better in Sunrise. Not only has Jones been forced to play over 25 minutes per night due to Ekblad and Kuikov’s absences, he’s managed just a single goal along with a 47.2 percent expected goals rating, per Daily Faceoff. “He really struggled in Chicago, and wasn’t playing anywhere near to the level that was commensurate to his pay. The Blackhawks chopped off $2.5 million and send him to Florida, where he has the next five years remaining on his deal,” said hockey insider Frank Seravalli earlier this week. “I thought it would be a great spot for him, because 1: He jumps back into playing meaningful hockey, and 2: He wouldn’t necessarily be counted on to be the guy, and 3. The contract isn’t really that much of a burden. Except, when you don’t play well, or don’t ratchet your game up, and maybe that takes a little bit of time, but it’s definitely concerning that he hasn’t looked better up until this point.” With Jones struggling, and Ekblad and Kulikov out, it’s safe to say that this is the worst the Panthers’ blue line has looked in years. After Forsling and Jones, the depth chart looks like: Niko Mikkola, Uvis Balinskis, Nate Schmidt and Tobias Bjornfot. If Florida can get the defense healthy, and Ekblad doesn’t miss a step, this probably won’t be too much of a concern when the postseason commences — especially if Bobrosky is his usual self once the games start to really matter. That being said, the blue line is certainly this roster’s fatal flaw, and if the Panthers aren’t able to make a third consecutive deep Stanley Cup Playoff run, defense will probably be the main culprit.