Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gerard Gallant reflects on end, reunion with Panthers
As the Florida Panthers floundered through the last four months of a once-optimistic season turned into obscurity, Gerard Gallant watched. He had no more young core to nurture and no more lineup to tweak, no more division championship to defend and no more team to coach. He could no longer alter the outcome or try to save the franchise from an injuryravaged start, paralyzed by an unceremonious firing last November.
So Gallant watched. Then he simmered. Then he calmed. Then he moved on.
But Sunday will be the first time Gallant gets a shot at his old team, when his expansion Vegas Golden Knights host the Panthers in the first meeting between the franchises. Gallant’s Golden Knights — who also boast former Panthers forwards Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith — are off to a terrific start in their inaugural season, racing to a 20-9-2 record.
“The bottom line is when you’re winning hockey games, it’s fun,” Gallant said in a recent phone interview. “And we’re having fun right now.”
It’s a drastically different position for Gallant from a year ago. This time last year, Gallant was unemployed. He spent time in Europe visiting his grandchildren in Germany (his son-in-law plays professionally in the DEL). When he returned to South Florida and stayed through April, he would watch Scouting report: The Florida Panthers face the expansion Vegas Golden Knights for the first time in franchise history on Sunday night at the T-Mobile Arena. It will be a reunion of sorts for the two teams, with former Panthers coach Gerard Gallant now behind the Vegas bench, and forwards Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith shipped there in the offseason. Marchessault and Smith have combined for 19 goals and 30 assists this season, while Gallant has guided the Golden Knights to a 20-9-2 record. … The Panthers enter Vegas after a 2-1 loss to Colorado on Thursday night, their second loss to the lowly Avalanche in a week . ... Florida has lost six of its last eight games. It has also collected points in five of seven games. … Sunday should be goaltender James Reimer’s sixth straight start for Florida. In the past three games, Reimer has been outstanding for the Panthers, posting a .935 save percentage and 1.97 goals against average. … Panthers forward Denis Malgin could return Sunday. Coach Bob Boughner previously said Malgin passed concussion protocol. hockey.
Sometimes he watched to see other teams around the league. But the Panthers still populated his screen, and his recent firing ate at him.
“It was still stinging me,” Gallant said. “After a while, I was watching just to see their players, to watch the games and to see the other teams that are playing, too. I probably watched 10 of their games after I got let go last year. The first four or five were tough.”
On the screen, Gallant saw his team. It was the group he helped transform from a 66-point team in 2013-14 to an Atlantic Division title team in 2015-16 with a franchise-best 103 points. He saw Aleksander Barkov continue to develop into an all-around center. He saw Jonathan Huberdeau morph from the teenager he coached in Quebec to a point-pergame forward.
But he remained powerless, the result of a “real disappointing” finish to his 185-game tenure in Florida as general manager Tom Rowe added “interim head coach” to his nameplate. Rowe took over as Florida’s GM after the 2015-16 season, replacing Dale Tallon and bringing a different philosophy to the front office.
The roster was flipped. The decision-makers were rotated. Gallant could sense change on the horizon, even if he said the Panthers didn’t give him a reason for his firing in Raleigh.
“When you get let go, I don’t want to listen to somebody tell me why I got fired,” Gallant said. “You could feel it coming, for whatever reason. I looked back at it and say: You know what, they treated me well when I was there. The owners paid me well. I did the best job I could do. They wanted to go in a different direction and do different things, so that’s what they could do. When you own a hockey team, you can do what you want.
“That’s basically where it went. They wanted to go in a different direction. When they let me go, I was upset for two weeks, but after that, I just moved on. I loved my time there. I loved my players there. I thought it was going real well. Obviously, other people had different thoughts.”