The Florida Panthers‘ season so far has been a particularly odd one. Go back to October and tell any Panthers fan their team will be second in the Atlantic Division through the first week of December, and people will be pretty happy.
The thing with being second in the Atlantic Division this year is that it comes with more of an asterisk than an exclamation point. This season, the Atlantic has been particularly weaker than in years past, with Tampa Bay and Toronto struggling out of the gates and Montreal on a torrid 2-6-2 stretch in their last ten after a very good month of October.