AP Interview: Owner Vincent Viola talks Panthers, Forte

SUNRISE, FLA. (AP) >> Vincent Viola has a problem. It’s a good problem.

Viola is one of the owners of Forte, the presumed favorite for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. He also owns the Florida Panthers, who just knocked off the favorites to win the Stanley Cup. And this weekend, with racing and hockey on his calendar, Viola might need to be in two places at once.

It beats the alternative. For the first time, the Panthers have reached the NHL’s second round in back-to-back years — getting there this year after stunning the Boston Bruins. The dark days for the franchise are gone, and Viola feels like the team is getting closer on making good on its promise to bring a Stanley Cup to South Florida.

“It’s everything that we anticipated around this process and on this journey,” Viola said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. “We feel that we got through some pretty tough roller-coaster years. It means an awful lot. And it means an awful lot because I see the confidence reflected in the fan base. I truly feel that the fan base truly believes in a way, quite frankly, that was not warranted in the past.

“They gave us a lot of confidence and a lot of support on credit. They kind of surrendered it to us on credit, and it took us a while to earn it. Now I feel we have an organization that they can be proud of.”

It’s hard to win in anything, and hockey is no different. Last season’s Stanley Cup finalists — champion Colorado and runner-up Tampa Bay — both lost this season in Round 1. Florida, Carolina and Edmonton are the only teams so far to qualify for the second round both this year and last year; the New York Rangers can join that list if they beat New Jersey in Game 7 of their series.

The Panthers, for years, made winning seem impossible. Last year’s first-round series win over Washington was the franchise’s first playoff triumph since 1996. A second-round meeting with Toronto awaits Florida now; the winner will be going to the conference finals for the first time in a generation. Florida got there most recently in that 1996 run, Toronto in 2002.

“We have people believing in this team,” Viola said.

He’s among them, of course, his faith not even wavering even in the final moments of Game 7 on Sunday night. The Panthers sent the game to overtime on a goal by Brandon Montour, then sent the team with the best regular-season record in hockey history home for the summer on an overtime game-winner by Carter Verhaeghe.

“My exact emotions, 51% of me really had this inexplicable optimism — don’t ask me why — and 49% of me was thinking through all of the hard work, the staff and the players, and all of the dedication of the fans, and the feeling of ‘Man, we let the fans down again,’” Viola said. “I was not giving up. I’ll put it that way. I hadn’t given up as a fan.”

And the win further validated two big moves the Panthers made last summer.