<p>On Friday night, the <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/florida-panthers/news">Florida Panthers</a> became the latest team to reveal their Quarter-Century team to honor its greatest players since 2000.</p>



<p>As each team releases its Quarter-Century squad, we’ll provide analysis on Daily Faceoff as to what the voters got right and wrong. Today, it’s the 2024 Stanley Cup champs’ turn to go under the microscope.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>THE TEAM</strong></h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>First Team</strong></h3>



<p>FORWARDS</p>



<p>Aleksander Barkov</p>



<p>Jonathan Huberdeau</p>



<p>Matthew Tkachuk</p>



<p>DEFENSEMEN</p>



<p>Aaron Ekblad</p>



<p>Gustav Forsling</p>



<p>GOALIE</p>



<p>Roberto Luongo</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Second Team</strong></h3>



<p>FORWARDS</p>



<p>Pavel Bure</p>



<p>Olli Jokinen</p>



<p>Sam Reinhart</p>



<p>DEFESNSEMEN</p>



<p>Jay Bouwmeester</p>



<p>Robert Svehla</p>



<p>GOALIE</p>



<p>Sergei Bobrovsky</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT</strong></h2>



<p>The Panthers have won a Presidents’ Trophy, a pair of Wales Trophies, and the Stanley Cup over the past three seasons. They’re in their golden age, and the selections here reflect that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Barkov and Ekblad are the pillars the Cats built around as they ascended from irrelevance to the summit of the NHL and were always going to be featured. Reinhart, Tkachuk, and Forsling have joined them as this team’s building blocks over the past few seasons, but it’s nice to see their old buddy Jonathan Huberdeau acknowledged with a first-team nod.&nbsp;</p><div class="injected-ad injected-video" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="0" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="179"></div>



<p>Huberdeau’s trade to Calgary helped make the Panthers what they are today, but that shouldn’t diminish his own success in South Florida; his 612 points as a Panther trail only Barkov, and a 115-point campaign in 2021-22 is a single-season record for the club.</p>



<p>The inclusions from the lengthy dry spell between Florida’s late-’90s pomp and 2020s revival aren’t just begrudging reminders of team history, either. Olli Jokinen was a monster power forward and a worthy captain; Bure won a pair of Rocket Richards in his brief stay in Sunrise; and, if it weren’t for a lengthy Vancouver vacation, Luongo would be right there with Barkov for the title of “best Panther ever.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>WHAT THEY GOT WRONG</strong></h2>



<p>Is there a bit of reverse recency bias at play here? Svehla was a tank during Florida’s early run in the NHL, but by 2000, he was 31, and the team around him was crumbling quickly. The Czech got some down-ballot Norris love after 1999-00, but after that, his points totals and +/- took a nosedive for a franchise that went from Cup darkhorse to lottery fixture. A trade to the <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/toronto-maple-leafs/news">Maple Leafs</a> proved he could still play, but that shouldn’t help Svehla make a Panthers team.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="1" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="200"></div>



<p>Brandon Montour only logged three full seasons for the Cats, but he led the club in average ice time ahead of Ekblad and Forsling in each of his last two campaigns and was a signature playoff performer. His 73-point season in 2022-23 was the most prolific by a defenseman in team history, and he probably should have gotten the nod to partner Bouwmeester, another mobile, all-situations defender, on this hypothetical team.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>BIGGEST SNUB</strong></h2>



<p>The answer is still Montour, but you have to feel for Tomas Vokoun, who had no chance of displacing the Hall-of-Famers in front of him in goal. He didn’t have the tenure of Luongo or the playoff success of Bobrovsky, but Vokoun posted a .923 SV% from 2007-11 while averaging over 60 starts per season for mediocre Panthers’ squads. The 300-game winner had better regular season numbers than ‘Bob’ in Florida, but rings talk.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="2" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="145"></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>VERDICT</strong></h2>



<p>It would have been hard to mess this up. With so many future legends on the Panthers’ current roster, the voters selected the best of the bunch and cherry-picked standouts from worse eras to fill out the rest of the roster. The result is a thoughtfully crafted team that leaves little room for major gripes.</p>
