Panthers can clinch first Cup in Game 4, allowing hockey to grow even further in South Florida

EDMONTON– Keith Yandle walked into the birthday party ready to pick up his 11-year-old daughter. The children were instructed to dress up for the party and wear a costume that highlighted their favorite character.

He didn't expect what he found.

“Three of the girls had (Aleksander) Barkov jerseys,” said Yandle, who has settled in South Florida after playing five seasons for the Florida Panthers from 2016 to 2021. “Just excited about the game. They're 10, 11 years old, but just excited about hockey, excited about having a winning team.”

It's a scene that was effectively unthinkable ten years ago.

The Panthers have been in the NHL for thirty, sometimes difficult, seasons, a franchise that has sometimes struggled with attendance, with eyeballs, with success on the ice. They made the Stanley Cup Final in their third season, 1995-96, and then made the Stanley Cup Playoffs in just four of the next 22 seasons.

But for the past five years, the Panthers have made the playoffs every season, reached the NHL's elite, won the Presidents' Trophy in 2021-22 and won a round in the playoffs for the first time since that 1995-96 season. reached the Stanley Cup Final each of the past two seasons.

They are now one win away from the Stanley Cup and lead the best-of-7 Finals 3-0 against the Edmonton Oilers, a franchise that has won the Cup five times in its 44 seasons. And if the Panthers can win one more game, with their first opportunity coming Saturday at Rogers Place (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, CBC, TVAS, SN), they will etch their name on the Cup and go down in the history books.

Steve Goldstein, who has been the voice of the Panthers on TV and radio and is currently the team's TV play-by-play broadcaster, has seen a lot in his 17 years with the club. But he's never seen this, where his days and nights are now full in June, where the hockey fans have come out of the woodwork and the non-hockey fans have joined the party.

There is only one step left.

What does winning the Cup mean for hockey in South Florida?

“It explodes it,” Goldstein said.

* * * *

Hockey arrived in Florida in a hurry.

In 1992-93 the Tampa Bay Lightning played their first games. The Panthers joined them in 1993-94.

There was success in those early seasons, more so for the Panthers than for the Lightning. Florida reached the Cup finals in its third season, losing to the Colorado Avalanche in four games. It wouldn't return for 26 seasons and rarely even sniffed the postseason.

The Panthers at the time played in the Miami Arena, a building that could get rowdy, an arena that gave rise to the rat tradition – originated when Scott Mellanby hit a rat against the wall with his hockey stick, killing it and giving rise gave to a rat. to thousands of plastic rodents thrown onto the ice after goals and wins – and an arena that witnessed the greatest playoff success the Panthers would ever have.

“It's a rabid fan base,” said Bill Lindsay, who played seven seasons for the Panthers, including their first season, the first Stanley Cup Final, and serves as the team's radio color analyst. “Those early '90s were crazy. It was wild.”

In 1998, the Panthers opened a new arena in Sunrise, Florida, about 35 miles from Miami and 14 miles from Fort Lauderdale.

But the good times ended and the franchise went fallow.

“We kept promising our fan base at the time that things would get better,” Lindsay said. “It's just been tough. We're rolling through players, all kinds of different coaches, general managers.”

But this started to build in 2013, when Vincent Viola bought the team. Coach Joel Quenneville was hired on April 8, 2019, lending gravitas and a winning pedigree to what the Panthers were putting together. (Quenneville, who resigned on October 28, 2021 following sexual assault allegations against a former Chicago Blackhawks video coach, is the second-winningest coach in NHL history, with 969 wins.)

It continued with the selection of Bill Zito, the general manager who was hired on September 2, 2020, and promptly began building a roster, remaking almost the entire Panthers team over the next three years.

“There have hardly been any playoff games played in this building, let alone wins,” Goldstein said. “But it really started happening when Joel Quenneville came here and they scored a bunch of goals and won and had that great series against Tampa four years ago. They lost in the first round.

“That's when it started. Then the hockey fans who may have been dormant came out. Over the last two years you've got all the non-hardcore hockey fans who are now part of the whole.”

That now puts the Panthers on the brink of a title, on the brink of greatness, on the brink of legitimacy in the eyes of some.

“A lot of what we consider incredibly well-built franchises have suffered when things didn't go right and then they got built,” said Panthers coach Paul Maurice, who has the fourth-most wins of all time (869) and was born on June 22, 2022 appointed coach. “Carolina, when we were in Greensboro, I think we had 1,200 people one night for a game against Calgary. And when you win and build a good program, you create an extensive fan base that is.” It does not necessarily have to fluctuate constantly with profits and losses.

“You have to play an exciting game of hockey over time, but we want to be a part of that and feel like we're part of building something with roots deep enough to be considered a model franchise. And these runs are crucial for that.”