Quenneville: ‘We’re gonna win’
New documentary includes peek into team meeting after head coach’s hire
It’s clear the hiring of Joel Quenneville was an important turning point in the Florida Panthers’ franchise. Now we know just how quickly that was evident to his players.
The Panthers released the first episode of a fivepart documentary series “Panthers Uncaged” on Wednesday. It’s a look inside the team ahead of the 24-team NHL playoff return, and it began by jumping back to April 2019, when Quenneville was hired.
It highlights the promise of bringing in a coach with three Stanley Cup titles to a team that hadn’t won a playoff series since 1996. It also shared brief footage of a meeting Quenneville had with his team immediately following his introductory press conference last year.
“I really want our team right now, like I said out there that know how you feel today — we don’t wanna have that feeling,” Quenneville said. “There’s a lot of great ingredients in here. There’s a lot of good hockey players. I’m excited to get to coach you guys. And we’re gonna win.”
The confident tone matches the way Florida approached this season, pairing its young talent with Quenneville and $70 million goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. General Manager Dale Tallon has been unequivocal all year goal to win now.
“From here on in, we want to get in the playoffs all the time, so our players get accustomed to it, get a feel for it,‘’ Tallon told the Sout Florida Sun Sentinel in June 2019. “So they can see why they’re making their sacrifices.”
The 2019-20 Panthers have won, at times. But after getting out to a hot start, Florida hit a wall immediately after the All-Star break. The team lost 7 of 9 games after the break, losing grip of its playoff hopes. The show references closed-door meetings and harsh practices, though it offers no direct footage of either.
Now the slate has been wiped clean, with the coronavirus pandemic offering Florida something of a lifeline. The Panthers will be the No. 10 seed in the Eastern Conference in the expanded playoff, set to face the Islanders in a fivegame series. No dates or sites have been set yet. in his
Beyond the season’s ups and downs, the first episode also touches on the quickness with which the coronavirus threat became understood.
“It wasn’t really until we went on that road trip, our last road trip, that we started hearing a lot about it,” said defenseman Mike Matheson. “And then that one day that the basketball players shut down their game in Dallas, and we were sitting in Dallas at that point. And that’s kinda when we all turned on the TVs and went ‘Oh, God, this is pretty serious.’ In the end, we didn’t end up playing the next day.”
Matheson, one of the team’s two Players Association representatives, eventually became one of the 29 representatives to approve the 24-team playoff format that the league is now gearing up for.
While the format clearly benefits teams like Florida, who sat outside the playoff slots when the season ended, Matheson expounded upon his rationale for supporting the plan.
“I think when it came down to that vote, the most difficult thing was to set aside the fact that we are in the situation we are in,” Matheson said. “It’s no one’s fault that we’re in the situation. All we’re trying to do is come up with the best scenario, and so I think the idea that they came up with — the 24-team play-in format — was the best option out there considering the situation we were in.”
Ultimately, though, the series seems eager to take on a tone of finality about reaching the playoffs.
The goal of doing so has been abundantly clear since the offseason; this season has always been framed as “playoffs or bust.”
No matter the unusual path, that’s where the team finds itself. And this series promises to explore that topic in the next four episodes.
“After weathering through a season of ups and downs, of long waits and uncertainty, the Panthers still somehow ended up right where they need to be,” the narrator read at the end of the episode. “For although the road to the 24-team playoff remains long and full of potential pitfalls, players know what they’re fighting for.
“The slate has been wiped clean, and the Stanley Cup is still there for the taking.”
The first episode of the show can be seen on the team’s Facebook, IGTV, PanthersVision and YouTube channels.