Time to stop skid

Hyde: Panthers need to give the keys back to Tallon.

If I own the Panthers, I hand the keys back to Dale Tallon. I pray he persuades Gerard Gallant to return as coach. I close my eyes and pretend this year never happened.

The Panthers delivered their traditional parting gift to a lost season Thursday night by having players take off game jerseys and hand them to fans.

The brain trust that oversaw the train wreck this season did that jersey tradition one better. They were completely undressed.

Everyone can see, in retrospect, how the front office crushed this season with selfinflicted mistakes.

A year ago, the Panthers were an ascending NHL franchise by any regular-season measure — wins, points, division title, talented young players, blue-ribbon organization and that conversational metric of closest South Florida team to a title.

Then the Panthers’ owners, Vinnie Viola and Doug Cifu, decided to “fix” their “problems.” Tallon, whose golden personnel decisions as GM built the team, was oddly kicked upstairs to the nebulous role of president of hockey operations. His roster was changed, his organization dismantled.

It wasn’t just Tallon’s lieutenant, Scott Luce, who was fired and immediately snatched up by expansion Las Vegas. It was scouts who left. The support staff players count on was made over — new trainers, equipment guys, medical people, travel coordinator . ...

Small things, in some cases. But they add up, as anyone inside a business knows. As it worked out, the face of the franchise this

year wasn’t Aleksander Barkov or Vincent Trocheck or some other player.

It was Tom Rowe. He hadn’t been a general manager or head coach of a NHL team until this year. Now he’s been both. And did he distinguish himself in either job?

It sounded noble of Rowe to admit the other day he didn’t get the job done. But why did he get the jobs? His mysterious ascent came at the expense of others and was one of the stranger gambles by a franchise that had so much working well.

Rowe and others of equal inexperience in the front office didn’t just persuade the team owners they held the answers over a hockey mind like Tallon. They remade the roster with those ideas.

That meant getting some good, puck-moving defensemen like Mark Pysyk, Keith Yandle and Jason Demers. They’ll tell you these players’ numbers were just as expected, too. Which they were. But that only underlines how wrong the larger blueprint was.

This isn’t fantasy hockey. The mix of talent matters. The trade of defenseman Erik Gudbranson, for instance, didn’t just net nothing for this year. It left the Panthers without a tough-guy defenseman. That showed on the ice.

Maybe they had to trade Gudbranson considering his contract had one year left. Or maybe Tallon, who loved Gudbranson for all he brought, could have worked out a deal if he’d been in charge. Who knows?

Tallon had his diminished role expanded as the disappointment wore on this year. It’s not back to what it was, though. He might not even be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again, considering the organization he took five years to build is in tatters.

But he’s the Panthers’ best hope. He knows these players best. He’s an experienced hockey mind in a franchise full of unproven ones. This inexperience showed on a daily basis, too. The firing of Gallant at the first opportunity. The reaction to criticism like sports newbies. The inability to see how players didn’t respect Rowe.

When the Panthers came back from a celebrated 5-0 road trip in late February, everyone in the franchise acted like the season already was a full success. Rowe didn’t talk about the playoffs being a possibility — they were a certainty.

Assistant General Manager Steve Werier tweeted that everyone just had to “believe the process” — only he put a duck emjoi followed by an “-ing” before “process.”

At some point, when the Panthers lost eight of their next nine games, that tweet with the duck emoji disappeared. As did this Panthers season. And the hope hockey would make a comeback in South Florida’s sports consciousness.

The hope now is that Viola and Cifu, who are obviously smart guys, are smart enough to put a proven hockey guy back in charge. Tallon is sitting there. The question isn’t really if he’s the best guy for this job.

The question is whether, after watching his good organization be systematically dismantled, Tallon even wants the job.

Dave Hyde