"Panthers rise from NHL to Stanley Cup Champions".

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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN

                                                                              Jun 25, 2024, 08:50 AM
A "SUNRISE, Fla. -- Aleksander Barkov didn't just lift the Stanley Cup after defeating the Oilers in Game 7.

A He lifted nearly three decades of failures, embarrassments, and frustration off the shoulders of the players, the fans, and the franchise.

A The Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup champions. No longer a punch line, no longer mocked for meager attendance, no longer wallowing in mediocrity on and off the ice after enduring 25 years between playoff series victories."

A "Oh, there could have been even more embarrassment. Florida nearly made history for all the wrong reasons, almost becoming the third team in NHL history to blow a 3-0 Stanley Cup Final series lead, forcing a Game 7. They were on the brink of joining the infamous ranks of the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters, and the 1942 Detroit Red Wings—the only team to lose the Stanley Cup Final after winning the first three games."

A "It would have been very 'Florida Panthers' to do that. But that's not who this franchise is anymore. They're not a joke. They're Stanley Cup champions.

A It's fitting that Florida won the Stanley Cup against a Canadian team—a nation that once saw the Panthers as either relocation bait or a warm-climate destination to watch their own teams at lower ticket costs. It's equally significant that they eliminated the NHL-leading New York Rangers in the conference finals, a prestigious Original Six team that has long enjoyed the respect the Panthers have fought hard to earn.

A Those teams came close to championships. The Panthers finished the story, becoming just the third team in the past 40 years to win the Stanley Cup after losing in the Final the previous postseason.

A But perhaps most incredibly: The Florida Panthers—the Florida Panthers!—are now a prestige franchise in the NHL.

A "It's pretty freakin' cool," said defenseman Aaron Ekblad, who is second to Barkov in career games played as a Panther. "It wasn't easy those first few years. There was a lot of learning and growing. New GMs, new coaches... that revolving door was tough, right? The fact that we're at this point now, where the expectation is to make the playoffs and to challenge for a championship, that's a really cool thing. I'm so happy to have been through it all with this franchise."

A Barkov stuck with them. Ekblad stuck with them. And more South Florida fans than you'd realize stuck with them, from the rat-tossing mid-1990s to their Stanley Cup parade this season.

A WHEN FLORIDA WINGER Evan Rodrigues was growing up in Toronto, the media covered only Canadian teams and winning teams.

A "So I would say I probably wasn't focused on the Panthers too much," the 30-year-old said.

A Fellow Ontario native Ryan Lomberg, 29, remembered how the Panthers were covered on social media.

A "I remember seeing pictures of the empty arena. Seeing all the red seats and seeing maybe a couple thousand fans. Being a kid from Toronto, I remember not really understanding how the contrast [with other teams] was so extreme," he said. "It doesn't even make sense to me how it was back then. The second I got here four years ago, the fans have been amazing. We have a strong following."

A Florida's attendance woes were a league-wide punch line, and the franchise did nothing to discourage it.

A "In 2004, while I was at college in Orlando, I met a guy who was a Lightning fan while I was watching the finals at a bar," Panthers fan David Roth said. "I told him I was a Panthers fan, and he looked at me with a look of absolute bewilderment and just said, 'Why?' As if it were so foreign a concept to be a fan of a team in Florida other than the Lightning."

A In 2006, the Panthers were averaging over 4,100 free tickets handed out for each home game. In 2008, the team introduced the "First Timer" program, in which anyone with a valid Florida driver's license could get two free tickets to a game.

A In 2010, after LeBron James made his decision to take his talents to South Beach, the Panthers responded by offering season tickets in the upper deck for $6 per game, ostensibly in honor of his new uniform number with the Heat. Even that price point didn't generate enough sales—the team announced that summer that it was going to tarp off 2,000 upper deck seats for most home games.

A "When you go 25 years between playoff series wins, and then only make the playoffs a couple of times during that span, you lose a couple of generations of fans," Florida CEO Matthew Caldwell said."

A "Caldwell ascended to his position in 2016, having worked with owner Vinny Viola for several years.

A Viola, who purchased the team in 2013, is one of a handful of majority owners during the team's turbulent history. The franchise was founded as an expansion team by billionaire Wayne Huizenga, who initially wanted to name them the "Block Busters" in honor of his video rental chain.

A In 2001, Huizenga sold the franchise to pharmaceutical businessman Alan Cohen and former NFL quarterback Bernie Kosar. Cliff Viner became the general partner in 2010, making two pivotal moves that would set up Florida for later success: hiring former Chicago Blackhawks GM Dale Tallon as head of hockey operations and tasking him with rebuilding through the draft.

When Viola took over, the real work began to repair the Panthers' reputation. It started with the way they ticketed games.

A "There were a lot of comp tickets, just all these gimmicks to get people into the arena," Caldwell said. "That doesn't work in the long term. It really angers your season-ticket holders when you're giving out all these freebies and promotions to people off the streets."

A "The Panthers used low price points to attract more fans into the building. With the team's attendance struggles came constant relocation speculation.

A "There were all these rumors that we should be moved," Caldwell said. "That this new ownership group was fixing it up and trying to relocate to Quebec at the time. Those were the headwinds we had to deal with."

A The chatter got so loud that owners Viola and Doug Cifu wrote a letter to fans in 2014 to assure them the Panthers weren't relocating. "Our plan is to build an organization that makes South Florida proud and to win the Stanley Cup in South Florida," they said.

A Even the Panthers' own municipality fueled relocation speculation. Broward County conducted a full analysis of the Panthers franchise and the broader question of whether there should be a hockey team in South Florida.

A Apparently, the County found enough reasons to commit to the Panthers, agreeing to a new arena lease that put Viola's team on solid financial footing.

A "It felt like a miracle at the time," Caldwell said. "But I think the county looked at it like, 'Hey, this is our last shot to see if the sport works here.'"

A While the team was getting its financial house in order, Caldwell's next task was to energize a fan base that had sunk into malaise.

A "When there's a fan base that's mad and angry and looking for a savior, that's actually a little encouraging. At least you know they're out there, and if you do the right thing, they're going to come back," he said. "The problem is that our fan base had become indifferent. There were still around 3,000 loyal season-ticket holders who wanted to see this happen. But many casual fans and former season-ticket holders had given up."

A Going 24 seasons between playoff wins will do that to a franchise. But Caldwell said getting their house in order off the ice was important for what would happen on the ice over the next decade.

A "When the Colorado Avalanche celebrated their Stanley Cup Final sweep of the Panthers in 1996, they skated through an ever-increasing pile of plastic rats.

A The rat-tossing tradition began during the 1995-96 season when forward Scott Mellanby used his stick to kill a rat in the locker room before a game. He then used the same stick to score two goals that night, which his teammates dubbed "a rat trick." To this day, rubber rats are available for purchase in the official Florida team store for $5 each, with the store selling upward of 150 on game days.

A The plastic rats symbolized the tradition the franchise created in its third NHL season. The Cinderella run bonded hockey fans and minted new ones. A few days after the 1996 Final, the Panthers hosted 15,000 fans at Miami Arena to celebrate that season's success."

A "Hopes were high that this was the start of something special for the franchise, but they didn't win another playoff series for 25 seasons.

A "It was brutal. There were so many years in the wilderness," said Panthers fan Scott Kandell. "We always seemed to have one or two good players with promise—like Nathan Horton, Stephen Weiss, and Olli Jokinen—but ownership's answer was always to bring in older players past their prime to try to create depth and get over the hump. And it always had terrible results."

A From 1996 to 2022, the Panthers had the 25th-best regular-season points percentage (.513) and the worst playoff record (13-29) in the NHL. There were exhilarating highlights during that otherwise bleak run—Pavel Bure's back-to-back goal-scoring titles, Roberto Luongo's Hall of Fame goaltending—but also draft busts, young players traded too soon, and a string of underwhelming teams.

A "It wasn't fun being the butt of attendance jokes (you know, when those jokes were actually legitimate), never seeing a playoff series, owners literally handing tickets out for free," said Panthers fan Max Horowitz. "It was a huge bummer considering the beginning of the franchise had such immediate promise."

A When Viola purchased the team, Jonathan Huberdeau (No. 3 overall, 2011) and Barkov (No. 2, 2013) had been drafted. Ekblad (No. 1) would join them in 2014.

A But success didn't follow right away. There were five coaching changes and an internal struggle between Tallon and the "Computer Boys"—the moniker given to the data-driven front office by some Canadian media—that led to inconsistent philosophy and bad decisions, like letting Jonathan Marchessault slip away in the Vegas expansion draft.

A At one point, Tallon was demoted as GM in 2016, then reinstated in 2017.

A However, Tallon's presence in 2019 helped the Panthers achieve an important turning point: luring Joel Quenneville to coach the team. Tallon had previously hired him to coach the Blackhawks.

A After Chicago fired Quenneville, the Panthers swooped in with a significant financial offer and the chance to work with Tallon again. He accepted.

A "He was obviously a hot commodity at the time coming out of Chicago," Caldwell said. "When we were able to land him, I think a lot of people said, 'Wow, you know, Joel can go anywhere and he picks Florida.' We certainly offered a good contract, but other big franchises wanted him too. And then we signed Bob."

A In the summer of 2019, Florida handed two-time Vezina Trophy winner and free agent goalie Sergei Bobrovsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets a seven-year deal, with an annual average value of $10 million. In the past, the franchise struggled to attract free agents. Now, one of the top ones had chosen them."

A Bobrovsky was all smiles after signing a seven-year, $70 million contract in free agency.

In 2020, after 10 seasons with the team, Tallon was fired.

A "When we purchased the Panthers in 2013, we did so with a singular goal: to win a Stanley Cup. We have not seen our efforts come to fruition," Viola said at the time.

A Florida conducted 23 interviews for the general manager job. Caldwell said they "scoured the Earth" to find the right candidate, ultimately finding him in Columbus: assistant GM Bill Zito, a former agent, was brought on to run the Panthers.

A Under Quenneville, the team showed improvement, although they still couldn't advance past the first round. Then, on Oct. 28, 2021, the Quenneville era ended.

A Quenneville resigned as head coach of the Panthers following a meeting with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman about his involvement in the Blackhawks' sexual abuse case.

A An investigation by the law firm Jenner & Block looked into allegations that former video coach Brad Aldrich sexually assaulted and harassed player Kyle Beach during the team's 2010 Stanley Cup run. The investigation revealed that Quenneville was aware of the situation and took part in at least one meeting regarding the allegations during the 2010 postseason.

A Quenneville had previously said he only learned of the allegations in the summer of 2021 "through the media."

A Caldwell said the Panthers' forward momentum as an organization could have been "100% derailed" by Quenneville's resignation, as he had two additional seasons worth over $15 million left on his contract.

A "We had this great coach and we were blindsided by all of it. We started the season 7-0 and then the news broke," Caldwell said.

A Associate coach Andrew Brunette stepped in as interim coach, leading the Panthers to their first Presidents' Trophy with the league's best record. He also coached them to their first playoff series victory since 1996, over the Washington Capitals. But after the Panthers were swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round, Brunette wasn't retained.

A Enter Paul Maurice.

A He had resigned as coach of the Winnipeg Jets in December 2021, suggesting the team needed a different voice. He wasn't sure if he'd get another head-coaching job and was content with that.

A Maurice was in the midst of "four phenomenal days of fishing" when Zito called him. They started talking hockey and immediately connected.

A  "I was good, right? I had given all that I thought I had to give, certainly been fortunate in the game and received far more than I gave," Maurice said. "But there's just these strange little things that meant Florida was right, that it was where I was supposed to be next."

A The Panthers hired Maurice on June 22, 2022. By this time, Zito was deep into shaping a championship roster.