Dave Hyde: The Panthers’ dysfunctional past lets fans appreciate this Stanley Cup Final run more
Their head coach once was locked out of team practices by the general manager. Their owner once tried to use the No. 1 draft pick on an underage player by claiming he was eligible if you factored in leap years.
They let fans in free to games one year by showing a Florida driver’s license. Another year, they set a stack of free tickets for each home game at a sub shop by the arena. They then stopped such giveaways, but draped off empty sections of the upper deck for games.
To fully appreciate the Florida Panthers’ path to the Stanley Cup Final starting in Las Vegas on Saturday, understand the comic falls and you-can’t-make-this-up moments they’ve taken fans over the previous quarter century.
The Panthers didn’t just lose liberally. They didn’t just go a quarter-century between winning playoff series. They didn’t just go 12 years without making the playoffs and play in a way a team official privately joked their best year in that stretch was a season canceled due to a labor lockout.
They did it all in a way that almost put the fun in dysfunction.
Take their firing of coaches. They’ve had a lot of practice at that, as 15 coaches have been fired in their 30 seasons. Few were professional firings. Some were retro-comedy. Remember Gerrard Gallant being fired in Carolina in 2016 and being left to hail a taxi from the arena, because he couldn’t get on the team bus?
Nothing was like the firing of Mike Keenan, because nothing was like the partnership of Keenan, owner Alan Cohen and general manager Rick Dudley. Cohen was likable man, if off-the-wall owner. For instance, he desperately wanted to draft Alex Ovechkin with the No. 1 pick in 2003. Who wouldn’t?
The problem was Ovechkin was born two days too late to be draft eligible. Cohen argued to league officials if you discounted his four days lost in leap years that he actually was draft eligible. He ordered Dudley to take him on draft night. Dudley did. The NHL didn’t allow it.
When Dudley tried to draft Ovechkin again in the ninth round, the league shut off the Panthers’ microphone and threatened to take away their pick (Ovechkin was taken No. 1 by Washington the next year and ranks second as the NHL’s all-time goals scorer).
Earlier, in the summer of 2001, Cohen visited the South Florida Sun Sentinel office for meet-and-greet with editors. Sports editor Fred Turner loved his Panthers and mentioned the team needed a gritty personality like former Panther Bill Lindsay. A few days later, the Panthers signed Lindsay, a free agent, for his final year. Coincidence?
This was how things worked. The Panthers lost two veteran backup goalies on the same day due to a paperwork snafu in the front office that exposed both to the waiver wire.
“Last man standing,’’ Roberto Luongo greeted reporters the next day.
Not for long. Just when Luongo appeared to have negotiated a new contract in 2006, he was traded to Vancouver by Keenan. The calamity wasn’t just that they traded the one player every team covets — a 27-year-old, future Hall of Fame goaltender.
It also was what the Panthers ended up with in return: Zip. Todd Bertuzzi was big name coming back in the trade. His career already was swirling in controversy due to a seasonlong suspension for a vicious hit.
Bertuzzi then suffered a back injury seven games into his Panthers era. Five months later, after never playing another game for the Panthers, he was traded to Detroit. Luongo, meanwhile, played his Hall of Fame prime in Vancouver.
The dysfunction led to Dudley locking the coach, Keenan, out of team practices. Has that ever happened in sports history? All that internal mess ended with Keenan sprinting off the team plane as it landed in Fort Lauderdale at 2 a.m. from a game in St. Louis to avoid what he knew was coming. Cohen and Dudley ran after him down the tarmac and fired him right there.
Keenan’s successor, Jacques Martin, was fired after a couple of seasons in another only-the-Panthers way. He was simultaneously promoted to general manager by Cohen. Martin had never been a GM and didn’t really want the job (but naturally, wanted his money).
Then there was Gallant’s firing and taxi hailing in 2016. That came 22 games into the 2016 season with an equally goofy backstory. The previous season, GM Dale Tallon and Gallant made the Panthers second playoffs in 15 seasons (even trading to get Luongo back to help).
But a palace coup led by Tom Rowe and a couple of assistant general managers convinced owner Vinnie Viola that Tallon and Gallant weren’t up for the job. The Panthers plummeted from first to sixth in the division that year. Rowe was fired, Tallon brought back (Gallant was hired by Vegas and led them to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018).
Tallon couldn’t put his broken team back together again, and Viola swung big to hire a Hall of Fame hockey mind in Joel Quenneville in 2019. What could go wrong, right?
Quenneville resigned seven games into the 2021 season after an investigation revealed he ignored a sexual assault inside his Chicago Blackhawks team a decade earlier. Only the Panthers.
Just when all seemed in a perpetually lost, Viola made a hire that didn’t draw big headlines but changed the sad-sack franchise. Bill Zito came in the door as general manager, and you can cue the harp music the day that happened.
Zito began collecting good players from bad teams: Sam Bennett from Calgary; Sam Reinhart and Brandon Montour from Buffalo; Anthony Duclair from Ottawa.
He then boldly fired coach Andrew Brunette after finishing with the best regular-season record last season to bring in a more gritty playoff style of play under Paul Maurice. Zito also traded the popular Jonathan Huberdeau for the younger, better Matthew Tkachuk.
Voila! Team Dysfunction is gone. The Panthers are in the finals. The organization that couldn’t think straight is four games from hoisting the Stanley Cup.
And their broken, bizarre history?
It’s almost funny to talk about now.
It mainly adds layers of appreciation to where they stand now.
