The ‘Comeback Cats’ are fun, but Panthers know ‘you don’t get away with it really often’

The Florida Panthers’ comeback win against the Washington Capitals on Tuesday was perhaps the most unlikely in the NHL all season. No team this year had come back when trailing by three goals at the start of the third period until the Panthers stormed back to beat the Capitals with four goals in the final 17 minutes.

Two days later, Florida hadn’t learned its lesson. The Panthers made a trio of defensive gaps in the first period against the Buffalo Sabres and were down by three again. Once again, they needed to make some history and their 7-4, come-from-behind win in Sunrise made them only the ninth team ever to rally from a three-goal deficit in back-to-back games.

“In this league, you don’t get away with it really often,” Andrew Brunette said Thursday. “We got away with it twice this week.”

Don’t get the interim coach wrong: “The good part outweighs the bad,” he said, but the Panthers know well this is no way to live.

Sure, they have the talent and the depth to erase basically any deficit, and this also means they shouldn’t get themselves into these spots, so Florida hopes it doesn’t have to make more history Saturday when it hosts the St. Louis Blues at 1 p.m. at FLA Live Arena.

It’ll take a much better start, particularly on the defensive end.

“It’s early in the games, right? We’ve got to come out with more jump,” star defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “We’ll try to tighten up on those defensive lapses early on.”

In Sabres game, the Panthers gave up only seven shots in the first period and Buffalo scored on three of them, all high-danger chances. After Sergei Bobrovsky gave up one more on the 12th shot he faced in the second period, Brunette puled him from the game, although he made sure to note he didn’t blame his goaltender for the 4-1 deficit Florida faced with less than 30 minutes to go.

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It’s the one way the Panthers have played with fire all year. Going into Thanksgiving, Florida had a top-five defense despite giving up the fifth most high-danger chances in the NHL. Bobrovsky was bailing his teammates out with the best high-danger save percentage in the NHL and the Panthers were putting up enough offense to erase any momentary defensive lapses.

Since Thanksgiving, Florida has given up four goals in four straight games, going 2-2-0 with the two wins only coming after falling behind 4-1. The Panthers’ defense, going into Friday, slipped to 10th with 2.70 goals against per game as Bobrovsky’s high-danger save percentage has gone from 92.6 percent — and otherworldly, unsustainable number — to 87.9 percent in a little more than a week.

“It’s a little bit of attention to detail,” Brunette said.

With the seventh best offense in the league, the Blues (12-8-3) are a team the Panthers can’t afford another slow start against.

Of course, these breakdowns are partly just a product of the way Florida plays. The Panthers have the best offense in the Eastern Conference and use their defensemen as major part of it, encouraging them to climb up and join the attack. It’s a “give and take,” Brunette said, and the negative is giving up a few more breakaway chances or odd-man rushes, leading to those high-danger chances.

The positive is the sheer offensive production they get from defensemen, who have combined for 11 goals and 69 points so far this season. Even defenseman Lucas Carlsson, whose filling in for injured defenseman Gustav Forsling, scored two points Thursday to help spark Florida’s comeback.

“I think I’m creating some chances offensively. That’s why I’m here,” the 24-year-old Swede said Thursday. “I’m an offensive player, so that’s what I need to do to be successful.”

It all gives the Panthers an identity perfectly suited for comebacks like the ones they’ve staged this week, even though they know they’re good enough to not need to rely on them.

“It’s hard to be negative at all with the way we try,” Brunette said. “We’ve just got to clean a few things up.”