Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov hoists the Stanley Cup after the Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals, in Sunrise, Fla. on June 24.Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press
The true test of hockey loyalty in south Florida is making the drive across Sunrise Boulevard in rush hour to get to a game. These may be some of the cheapest tickets in the NHL (you can get a good seat for about US$50), but how much are those hours of your life worth?
Having come all this way, the fans were in no hurry to leave. An hour-and-a-half after Monday’s Game 7 ended, the vast system of parking lots that encircles Amerant Arena was still full. Everybody was inside watching the Panthers players and every single person they’ve ever met milling around on the ice.
You’ve got to give it to these people. They aren’t our idea of a traditional hockey fan – we, as a rule, do not hoot ‘CA-NA-DA, CA-NA-DA’ through our guests’ national anthems. But cultural accommodations must be made.
The important thing is that the Stanley Cup is back where it belongs – in Hurricane Alley.
As the party got on the wrong side of midnight, sports books began dropping next season’s Stanley Cup picks. This is the moment when the odds are reflective of team quality rather than where the money is landing.
Florida is everyone’s early favourite, but at +900 they seem like a value proposition.
The Panthers’ formula was already inflation proofed, and now it is pressure resistant. How would you feel if you’d managed to pull yourself out of a historical faceplant just as your chin was contacting the pavement? Nothing would worry you after that.
All of the Panthers’ major pieces will be back next year. Until they’re two rounds into the postseason, the local expectation is, ‘Hey, what are the Dolphins doing right now?’ If they lose, they’ve got last year. If they win, they’ve got the most unlikely dynasty in team sport.
How do you compete with a club like that?
In the National Hockey League, you don’t.
Take the Leafs. As one fine Albertan sighed after another pressroom conversation turned in that direction, “We do not all walk the Earth thinking about how everything affects Toronto.”
We don’t?
Under cover of these playoffs, the Leafs have gone from an organization determined to make major changes to one starting to accept that their kids will never move out. Why would they? They have it too good at home.
The Boston Bruins just traded their other good goalie to Ottawa. They are a Jeremy Swayman away from being completely mediocre.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are still coasting on their pandemic-era glory days. And in Detroit, it’s been next year for going on three years.
If Florida is on the cusp of an historic run, it’s not because it’s so good (which it is). It’s because the default position in the NHL is paralysis.
Once a team gets good enough to make a credible push into the playoffs, it freezes time. It traps a few stars in amber by giving them an endless series of deals with no-trade protection.
Florida’s Atlantic Division competition remind you of the one about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a lightbulb. Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.
If a team wants to reverse direction, there are no mini-tanks or modified rebuilds. The accepted way of doing things is to change your phone number and wait for the wheels to fall off your bus.
The San Jose Sharks begin Phase 2 of this process on Friday when they draft consensus No. 1 pick Macklin Celebrini.
(It is another sign of creative entropy in the NHL that there is never any debate over the No. 1 pick. The hockey hive mind agrees on it months ahead of time.)
It’s an exciting time to be a Sharks’ fan, assuming such a person still exists. It has been less of an exciting time for the past five seasons, as the franchise was flopping around on the deck.
It’s also not going to be an exciting time for the next three or four years as they add draft pieces around Celebrini, which means continuing to be terrible. That’s a decade of misery, which may or may not turn out. It depends on whether the teenagers you’ve chosen have the minds of fighter pilots to go along with the hands of concert pianists.
That’s the way you go about your business in the NHL – the way the Oilers and Leafs have done it, and the way Chicago and San Jose are trying to do it now.
Then there’s the Florida way. If this franchise tells people that good things take a while, it will have to start giving the tickets away. It’s done that. You used to be able to get into this building for six bucks.
Instead of waiting on the draft do their work, the Panthers did it themselves.
In the midst of building themselves out the way everybody says to do it (small and fast), Florida went the other way (tough and impossible to get through). And here we are.
This alternative way of doing things is also hard and no more likely to succeed, but it saves time. Making smart trades and signings is something you can do every year. Refusing to give every guy who’s ever scored 30 goals a cap-busting, long-term deal is a discipline that can be practised, though few choose to.
In the end, the NHL hasn’t changed – executives who pick good players with complementary styles win.
What has changed are expectations. They’ve been managed. Nobody loses any more. They learn how to win.
When does the learning turn into actual winning? That’s a mystery.
Anyone who wonders why they are paying top dollar to watch a team that’s in permanent beta testing is shouted down for not understanding how things work.
There are a bunch of little reasons the Oilers lost this series, but the main one is that when they first got a chance to look the Panthers in the eye, they blinked. You can’t draft for sustained eye contact. The Oilers will be hoping you learn by failing at it once.
So congratulations to the Florida Panthers. They zigged while a whole league zagged.
Now comes the easy part. In order to continue being the best team in the NHL, the Panthers don’t have to do anything. They just have to keep on keepin’ on, knowing few of their competitors have the sense, the imagination and/or the will to copy them.