This is new. The Florida Panthers are one of the NHL’s top teams. Everyone says so. This might cause a snicker, or even dizziness, for anyone who quit paying attention to hockey over the past couple of decades as they made national news in other ways.
They made the playoffs once in 15 years in one stretch. Their one-time star, Pavel Bure, was benched in the postseason after scoring a league-leading 59 goals another year. A former owner, Alan Cohen, criticized Washington for not showing sympathy after taking a 6-0 lead in what became a 12-2 rout. And on. And on.
So yes, this is new at the edge of Thursday’s season opener: They’re good. They’re respected. They’re the seventh-best team in hockey, ESPN’s power rankings say. They’re eighth, according to FiveThirtyEight.com. They’re the top “dark-horse candidate” to win the Stanley Cup, according to The Athletic’s staff.
These Panthers haven’t done anything, either. That’s the fascinating part. They haven’t even won a playoff series. But everyone saw how they lost to Tampa Bay in the playoffs last year, recognizes the accumulation of coaching and talent and understands this is the year. It’s even said without sarcasm, for once.
The one thing that strikes Florida Panthers General Manager Bill Zito is a bit striking in itself. It’s how excited this team is.
“They can’t wait to play,’’ he said. “It’s almost like amateur hockey players growing up.”
That’s not exactly what you expect a middle-aged general manager to sense about a middle-aged team. It’s telling, though. The Panthers have a high-powered offense and are close, they know. So very close. The only question left is: Close to what?
Consecutive playoff appearances for the first time since the dark ages of 1997?
A postseason series win for the first time since 1996?
Something more to ignite a lost hockey market? That’s what this season becomes about. It’s about hard lessons, too. This current roster doesn’t inherit the ghosts of Bure’s benching or a previous owner’s cry for mercy.
But stars like Jonathan Huberdeau (10th season), Aleksander Barkov (ninth season) and Aaron Ekblad (eighth season) have been around long enough to learn impatience. They’ve learned these past couple years under a top coach in Joel Quenneville, too.
That doesn’t mean they were always simple lessons. Quenneville once stopped a road practice his first season, wondering why everyone was even out there, the effort was so shabby.
They learned from the Tampa Bay Lightning last playoffs just what a championship team looks like. It was a hard-fought and bare-knuckled series. It was also the opening round. So there remain layers of lessons out there.
There was another critical lesson that series: Contracts don’t override competition. Sergei Bobrovsky and his $72 million contract was unceremoniously benched. Not once but twice. The last time was for rookie Spencer Knight, who came out of college and only played a handful of games.
Knight carried a game that series, too. He becomes the big story this season. Quenneville is picking his words carefully. Bobrovsky will start. Knight will have a role. That’s the strategic way to approach everything in a long season.
It also carries the idea of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick saying all training cap Cam Newton is his starting quarterback right until cutting the veteran for rookie Mac Jones. That’s not to say Bobrovsky is Newton. It’s to say he’s on notice.
Knight is the future. The question is when the future arrives. Early on in December? By April’s playoffs? A year from now?
That’s for Bobrovsky and Knight to decide with their play. All you know is coddling isn’t part of Quenneville’s regime. Feelings, either. Bobrovsky left the team that first playoff night he was benched. Did it matter? Does it matter now?
Zito has done some notable work this offseason. He added a rising scorer in Sam Reinhart from Buffalo. He shored up some of the defensive problems that plagued the Panthers after Ekblad broke his leg last year.
“The pace, the tempo, day to day, the coaches have done a great job of elevating the expectations,’’ Zito said. “You come here to work. You come here prepared. As in many things, you hear a lot of it in sports, it’s the little things.. The attention to details.
“Do you want to be champions? Here’s what you have to do.”
The Panthers are closer than they’ve been in decades to something good. The only question left is how good it becomes.