Ryan: The road through the Atlantic looks even tougher for Bruins with rise of a familiar Panthers roster

One of the great joys that come with getting so invested in this frustrating, unforgiving, riveting game that we call hockey is the unpredictability involved with each new NHL campaign.

The usual preseason prose in which we churn out power rankings and stamp our bold predictions into print are often a hockey writer’s most dreaded assignments — given the many twists and turns that await over the next eight-plus months.  

It’s a game in which teams once cast off as flotsam and jetsam can stay afloat and chart a course towards Stanley Cup immortality in the span of a few weeks — a swing that the 2018-19 Bruins can, unfortunately, attest to. 

It’s a game in which season-long juggernauts can crumble within days — with a tumbling puck, unfortunate bounce off the end boards and other seemingly inconsequential events dooming what seemed like such a promising season. 

Bruins fans have seen their club ride the roller coaster that is an NHL campaign countless times — relishing in the good and bemoaning the bad. 

And yet, for as unpredictable as the product on the ice often tends to be around the league, the Bruins … have kinda followed a similar script over the last few years — at least as far as mapping out their path through the Stanley Cup Playoff gauntlet.

Beyond last season — in which COVID-related restrictions compressed the league into regional-based bouts and reshaped the entire playoff bracket — the Bruins have usually found themselves mired in the same familiar company by the time the postseason rolled out.

Sure, standings are shuffled some throughout an 82-game slate, but barring a monumental collapse or a slew of injuries, the top of the Atlantic Division has usually been anchored by the same triumvirate in the Bruins, Lightning and Maple Leafs. 

And yet, while some in the hockey community are already penning the script for the Maple Leafs’ demise off of a 3-4-1 showing or fretting about Tampa’s sleepwalking start to its three-peat hopes — there’s a lot of hockey to be played. 

And if the Bruins do punch their ticket to the postseason in 2022, it’s pretty safe to assume that both the Leafs and Bolts will be standing in their way once again.

But, for the first time in a long time, there might be another foe serving as a roadblock in the already crowded path out of the Atlantic.

And based on early returns, it could shift the balance of power in the division at the worst possible time for Boston. 

As disheartening as the final score might have been on Wednesday night, Bruce Cassidy didn’t feel as though his club was soundly knocked down on the mat following Boston’s 4-1 loss to the Atlantic-leading Florida Panthers.

"We got outplayed a little,” Cassidy said. "It's not like it was one team dominated. I thought we each had our way in a period. The third, they did what they had to do to put the game away. We did have a push, but it came down to a couple of plays in each end where they got a save or they finished or the opposite."

Indeed, Wednesday’s meeting played out like a heavyweight bout between two contending titans in the Atlantic.

Boston landed body shot after body shot in the opening 20 minutes (holding a 15-5 edge in shots on goal), but was unable to deliver an early haymaker — giving the Panthers room to strike back as time continued to tick off the clock.

As ugly as the second period was for Cassidy’s club (Florida outshot the visitors, 14-2), plenty of Boston’s woes in this one were self-inflicted — be it sloppy puck management, errant feeds that created layups down the other end for the Panthers or uncharacteristic poor performances from some of Boston’s top guns. 

“All the things we did well in the first period — specifically manage the puck against a good offensive team — we did the exact opposite in the second,” Cassidy said. “It started right away, below the goal line, breakouts, got pinned in our end, forced some plays, mismanaging pucks, power play — our skill guys on their backhand, basically turning pucks (over). It snowballed in the second period.”

Of course, hockey is a game of mistakes. But what separates the good teams from the great in the NHL is the ability to consistently do damage when those miscues fall in your lap. 

And Florida did that throughout Wednesday’s contest — whether it be Mason Marchment burying a puck on what was essentially a 2v5 sequence in Boston’s end or Anthony Duclair taking the initiative on a poor line change and tucking the biscuit past Linus Ullmark for some added insurance in the third.

But make no mistake — even if the Bruins might try to draw some silver linings from a night like this — this Florida team is poised to sow terror across the league in 2021-22. 

As far as mapping out the blueprint of a Cup-contending roster, Florida checks off just about all of the boxes.

And to go a step further, the Panthers have some striking similarities to the early 2010s Bruins — a roster that seemed ready to do some damage for a long, long time. 

- A superstar, two-way pivot in his prime? Check. (26-year-old Aleksander Barkov).

- Scoring depth sprinkled across the lineup? Sure seems like it. (Nine different Panthers have already lit the lamp twice through seven games - with proven weapons like Jonathan Huberdeau, Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett slotted down to middle-six roles). 

- Youth on their side? No doubt. (Their top-10 scorers have an average age of just 25.2 - with Huberdeau being the oldest at just 28). 

- A stout D corps and some bottom-six thump? Yep. (Aaron Ekblad, MacKenzie Weegar and Radko Gudas on the blue line — with an injured Noel Acciari, Marchment and Patric Hornqvist primed to give teams fits on the forecheck.)

- A promising pipeline of more young talent? Mhm. (20-year-old Anton Lundell has five points in five games, while goalie Spencer Knight was our pick to take home the Calder this season.)

- And a firm goaltending duo anchored by an established veteran and complemented by a potential star in the making? Sure looks familiar to me (a suddenly revitalized Sergei Bobrovsky and the aforementioned Knight).

Put it all together, and you have a team that has frankly, already arrived — and should only get better with so much youth locked up for the foreseeable future.

Of course, we'll say it again: There's a lot of hockey to be played, and there are many twists and turns still on the horizon.  

As talented as they are, who knows what awaits this Panthers club once the stakes are raised in playoff hockey — with many young rosters often felled during their first few treks toward the Cup. 

And hopefully, the Panthers will be in search of a new head coach as soon as Thursday afternoon. 

But in some ways, the Panthers represent the Bruins' worst nightmare: A carbon copy of the seemingly sustainable powerhouse they once had more than a decade ago — now here to thwart this aging B's core's last few cracks at the Cup.

Every good script needs a plot twist, I suppose. 

The Bruins just wish it didn't come at their expense.