Playoffs could spark fan interest
Panthers have 13 games left to grab No. 8 seed
SUNRISE — I will say right at the start of this column that it is not for hockey insiders. If you’ve lived and (mostly) died with the Florida Panthers for so many empty years, this is not for you.
If you know Aleksander Barkov is in the conversation this season for the NHL’s Hart Trophy — not to mention what the Hart Trophy actually is — this isn’t for you.
If you can name more than five Panthers players, you probably won’t get it, either.
Which means it’s for most of South Florida. That’s the cost of the Panthers skate through the wilderness most of the past two decades. They’re down to the cockroach category of fans — the ones that will be around no matter what.
That’s why, as they skated into the third period with Edmonton on Saturday at a half-empty BB&T Center, as they held a one-goal lead, as the crowd chanted, “Let’s go Panthers,” I found myself humming along.
No cheering in the press box? There’s cheering for the story. The Panthers are on the edge of being a story once again in South Florida, too. A good story. A relevant story.
They’re a story where ownership corrected last year’s blunders, the right people were put back in charge, a real coach was hired, professionalism returned to the
team, and now a late run up the standings gives hope for the playoffs.
Saturday’s 4-2 loss to Edmonton didn’t help. Roberto Luongo, a hero of this recent run, stood before his locker afterward, waiting in a silence that hovered over the Panthers’ dressing room. He’s been around the rink. He knows the questions that were coming before they were asked.
“Needless to say, I don’t feel too good about myself after [Saturday],” the Panthers goalie said after letting in a couple goals he rarely does. “I feel I cost us a game here.”
The Panthers lost for the first time in 24 games they’ve entered the third period with a lead. So they lost a game they shouldn’t have, leave home for a while in a way they didn’t want and said all the right things about patience, identity and how a good game out next time gets them right back to where they want. All true.
Here’s another cold truth about the rest of this season: The Panthers need the playoffs. You see it everywhere you look. TV ratings so low they’re tough to measure. Attendance always near the league bottom. Local interest at such levels only one newspaper, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, has a beat writer.
We talk a lot about the business of sports across the sports pages these days. That’s often about contract decisions and salary caps and how a team’s blueprint works. It’s rarely about the actual, functioning business. For years, criticizing the Panthers has been like kicking a puppy, they’ve been so downtrodden. They haven’t won a playoff series since 1996. They’ve only had a few chances to do so since then, too.
Now they have a chance to do something good. Something needed.
“We’ve got to treat every game like the playoffs,” center Vincent Trocheck said after Saturday’s loss.
People say this isn’t a hockey town. But put a two-decade drought in any city, in any sport, and it won’t be that kind of town. That’s why this season where the Panthers have returned to health on the ice matters.
It’s why these final 13 games matter. They sit ninth in the standings after Saturday’s loss, meaning they need to jump to the eighth. Seven of their next eight games are on the road.
There’s the technical end of this to consider:
“If we bring what we did in the first part of this game to the road trip, we’ll be fine,” Panthers coach Bob Boughner said. “But we can’t afford to bring what we did in the second half. That’s the difference in our identity and how we play.”
There’s also the emotional end to consider: It won’t crush the hard-edged hockey fans who showed up again Saturday. They’ll be back next year. But to most of South Florida that doesn’t know Barkov from the Hart Trophy? That’s why the next 13 games matter a lot.