Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Panthers are all grown up
This is the year to make a playoff bid, Hyde says.
CORAL SPRINGS — Is this the most talented Florida Panthers’ team Roberto Luongo has played on? “By far,’’ he says. Good chance for the playoffs? “Yes, of course.” The veteran goaltender follows with brake-pumping qualifiers about it being a long season, health being the great unknown and, as he said, “First thing first, we’re just thinking about the opening game right now.”
The opener is Saturday in Tampa. The home opener follows Thursday against Columbus. And, if there’s no buzz outside, the buzz inside the Panthers is loud and, for once, legitimate enough so even in this hockey purgatory it shouldn’t be the annual bloom of hope that’s gone by January.
The top two lines can score with the top teams. The defense is full of players around the 300-game mark used as a barometer for necessary experience. Luongo, at 40, remains in the top tier of goalies. And the kids this team built around – Aleksander Barkov, Vincent Trocheck, Jonathan Huberdeau, Aaron Ekblad – aren’t kids any more.
“They’ve grown up right before our eyes, and they’re men now,’’ General Manager Dale Tallon said. “The transformation is both mental and physical. They know this is their team now. They know it, and they’re ready for that.”
If the Panthers can’t construct a good season so many central parts in their prime, maybe this team never will make it. Maybe this full organization won’t again, always staying down like some mythological tale of despair.
It’s a South Florida debate for our times whether Marlins fans or Panthers fans have suffered more. The Marlins have two championships, but also have endured fire sales, ownership despair and, most recently, the death of Jose Fernandez and trading of perhaps the past two National League MVP winners in Giancarlo Stanton and (probably) Christian Yelich.
The Panthers, by comparison, are a flat-lined blip. They haven’t won a playoff series since 1996. They’re so irrelevant even in the hockey world they’re on one nationally televised game this season. Against Winnipeg. In Finland. Airing 2 p.m. on a weekday.
This is the year to change that, if any is. This is the team, too, if it ever will. Barkov is better at his position than any other South Florida pro is at their position.
The timeline won’t work much longer, either, with Luongo’s age and injury history. The challenge always was for the kids to grow up before Luongo grew too old.
“The question for us is how healthy we can keep [Luongo],’’ Tallon said. “He’s as good as anyone in the league.”
The fact, too, is the stage looks empty. No one’s winning big. Not the Marlins or Dolphins or even the Heat right now. This is
the Panthers’ chance to win off the ice as much as on it. Doug MacLean tells a story. He was coach of the 1996 team that’s taken on mystical tones in part because there’s nothing else for this franchise to remember.
MacLean went to a Delray Beach sports bar and asked the bartender to put the television on the Panthers game.
“It’s not football season,’’ the bartender answered.
The Carolina Panthers came to mind before the Florida Panthers. That sounds about right for the common sports fan. These Panthers have kept hockey irrelevant. The latest blunder came when they demoted or fired those in charge of making the playoffs in 2016.
That cost two seasons. They’ve recovered now. They became a good team by the second half of last year, though coach Bob Boughner doesn’t see that as a natural springboard to this season.
“It was good for our confidence at the end of the year,’’ he said. “I think our guys realized when we trusted each other, trusted the system, we had some success. But it’s a brand new year. Everyone around us got better.”
He’s right. Luongo is, too, in saying this is the most talented of his Panthers teams. It’s the most talented Panthers team of them all, really. Not that this says much. What matters is the organization that hasn’t won much is built to win this year. It’s their time. Or it might never be.