Dave Hyde: What a run Panthers gave South Florida in making hockey relevant after 27 years
LAS VEGAS — They lined up at center ice, just as protocol demanded, their faces in stone and emotions near tears while waiting to shake the winners’ hands. Some would well up later in the locker room, just speaking of these last couple of months, of what its end meant — of just trying to find the right terms to describe it.
“I don’t have the word,’’ Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice said one point, trying to compress all that happened into a few syllables before later saying, “I love those guys. They gave me a great year of my life.”
Isn’t that it? Didn’t they give everyone on the bandwagon something? Maybe it was just a great couple of months if you started with the playoff run that was now ending with the Panthers lining up behind Radko Gudas on their side of center ice.
The party was on the other side. The Stanley Cup was being brought there, too. Sometimes the magic is on that side, no matter how good a run you have. And the Panthers had a great run. It was 27 years between trips to the Stanley Cup Final with enough misery, calamity and comedy in between to give you a full appreciation for this team.
Even then, you didn’t fully appreciate it. You couldn’t. The full story wouldn’t come out until after the Panthers’ 9-3 loss to Vegas in Game 5. Even as the Vegas players passed around the Stanley Cup on the ice, Maurice stood in a quiet room saying how star Matthew Tkachuk couldn’t play Tuesday because he had a broken sternum.
“He scored a goal like that,’’ Maurice said of that game-tying goal in the final minutes of Game 3 that led to the Panthers’ sole win of the series in overtime.
Someone put Tkachuk’s jersey on for him in Game 4. And laced his skates. And by Game 5 the pain was too much to play.
“Four players broke bones,’’ Maurice said, ticking down the anatomy of Aaron Ekblad, Sam Bennett and Gudas.
He already had congratulated Vegas, said they were better, but he was working toward something when he spoke about the injuries, “This isn’t an excuse. We don’t need one. These guys earned the right. They gave everything they had.”
What’s more, they achieved what the best teams do in sports. That isn’t always a title. It’s something equally elusive and more intangible.
“What it can be like,’’ Maurice said
Let this sit a moment, because this was sports wisdom being passed down from a veteran coach in the emotional moments after a soul-crushing loss.
“I don’t mean in terms of winning a Stanley Cup, but I mean what a (locker) room can be like,’’ he said. “What a work environment can be like when you find that special, special group of guys. To describe the relationship, I’d say they love each other. Truly care about each other and connect with each other.”
There were so many defining moments on the ice. The comeback against Boston? The shutdown of Toronto? Just on Tuesday, there was a Boston Globe story lamenting Sergei Bobrovsky’s breakaway save of Boston’s Brad Marchand with less than a second in regulation of Game 5. Tkachuk won it in overtime. Remember?
But here’s the larger point: Maurice was saying the most beautiful part of this wasn’t about a shot or a win or even about hockey at all. It was about a group that came together and created magic.
“All the good things in this game actually aren’t the game,’’ he said. “The hockey is great. We love the sport. But the best it can be is in a room like that. It was a brilliant year.”
It made South Florida care about a hockey team, actually care, for the first time in 27 years. It was a nod to the Panthers’ odd past that Vegas center Jonathan Marchessault, who once scored 30 goals for the Panthers, was named the Conn Smythe Winner as the NHL playoffs’ Most Valuable Player. Making Marchessault available in the 2018 expansion draft is the type of blunder they haven’t done of late.
Panthers general manager Bill Zito took advantage of other teams’ mistakes in building this team. Sam Reinhard and Brandon Montour from Buffalo. Sam Bennett from Ottawa. The Tkachuk trade. There’s work to be done to the roster, sure, but what work they did on the ice this year.
“I’ve never ever in my life had a year like this,’’ said Maurice, 56, with nearly three decades as an NHL coach. “These guys made it fun for me.”
The party ended in Vegas. Too big. Too deep. Just too good by any measure. So, like the Miami Heat, the Panthers ran down a yellow brick road right until they met a brick wall in their final series. And stood in line to shake hands. And then stood afterward trying to say what it all meant.
“I’ll give you a line,’’ Maurice said. “My mom said, ‘You’ll never know how much you love somebody until you have a kid.’ I said, ‘Yeah, mom, what are you talking about?’ The things you can’t know until you experience it. You can’t know how hard this is.”
Broken bones, overtime goals, three magical series and they reached the Stanley Cup Final. They took you on that ride with them. And then they found the party was on the other side. But what a run it was for those waiting to shake hands on their side of the ice.