The Panthers are the NHL's most shorthanded team, and it's costing them

The Panthers aren't losing because they're soft. They're losing valuable minutes because they can't stay out of the penalty box, and two straight losses have made that impossible to ignore. Physical intimidation is part of this team's identity. Intimidation from the penalty box is just a long, exhausting night for the penalty killers.

Here's the number. Florida has been shorthanded 46 times in 11 games, 4.18 times a night, by our count. That's the most in the NHL. Montreal is second at 4.11, and the Canadiens spent this week publicly calling their own penalties stupid.

The cats are averaging 15 penalty minutes a game, by our count. Bokondji Imama has 29 of them, Garnet Hathaway 25 and Brady Tkachuk 17. Some of that is the job description. Imama is on this roster specifically to answer the bell, and nobody in Sunrise wants him to stop.

Ottawa was the bill

Florida took 44 penalty minutes in Wednesday's 5-1 loss and was shorthanded seven times. Early in the third period, a scrum erupted in front of the Senators' bench while trainers attended to an injured Linus Ullmark.

Matthew Tkachuk received a $5,000 fine for roughing Dylan Cozens, the maximum the league can impose. Nick Cousins got the maximum on Ottawa's side for reaching over the bench. Sam Bennett and Ridly Greig fought, and so did Imama and Hayden Hodgson.

I understand it. Brady was getting booed relentlessly in his old building, and his brother and Benny went to war for him. That's ferda, and I won't pretend I hated all of it. But it was a 3-1 game entering the third period, and a period spent in scrums isn't a comeback strategy.

Pittsburgh was a different problem

Thursday wasn't about discipline. Florida was shorthanded three times and allowed nothing on the penalty kill. It simply never solved Arturs Silovs, who stopped all 26 shots, and Cooper Black's debut on the second night of a back-to-back got no offensive support. I went through it in the recap.

The penalty kill is covering for it, for now

Eight power-play goals against on 46 opportunities is an 82.6% penalty kill, 11th in the league by our count. That's a credit to the defensemen and forwards absorbing all those shorthanded minutes. It's also not a sustainable strategy.

Every two minutes on the kill is two minutes the top six spends watching from the bench. This group already converts just 19.2% of its own power plays. It can't afford to surrender the even-strength time where it does its real damage.

The opener in Raleigh is the version of this that works. Florida was shorthanded six times on Sept. 29 and still won 1-0. You can survive that occasionally. You can't survive it every night.

The solution isn't to stop being the Panthers. It's choosing the confrontations that matter and skipping the extra shove after the whistle. Florida is 5-4-2 with 12 points, and the road trip continues in Chicago on Sunday afternoon and Winnipeg on Tuesday.

Pabs' read: This team won two Cups by being the opponent nobody wanted to play, not the one that couldn't stay out of the penalty box. Keep it under four penalties in Chicago and the cats win that game.