Russo: Panthers' road from 'shame' to the Stanley Cup — a comedy of errors with a 'fairytale ending' (2024)

SUNRISE, Fla. — If you have the history with hockey in South Florida that I do, having gotten my start covering the NHL with the Sun-Sentinel here in 1995-96, everywhere you turned Monday night there was a goosebump-raising, spine-tingling moment.

There was the sight and sound of emotional radio color analyst Bill Lindsay, who has made Broward County his home for 30 years and has the Panthers tattooed into his being, calling the end of the game.

This was a heart-and-soul NHLer, the bookend to Tom Fitzgerald on Florida’s famed 1996 checking line who scored what was considered for nearly three decades the biggest, prettiest goal in club history when he schooled Hall of Famer Ray Bourque in the final minutes of a tie game against Boston to deliver the Panthers their first-ever playoff series victory and trigger a Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup Final in the organization’s third year of existence.

Throughout these playoffs, Lindsay brought his ailing 93-year-old father, Junie, to games. Junie has since gone into hospice care but still got to witness the Panthers win the Stanley Cup in what Lindsay said may be a “fairytale ending” to his life.

This is one reason Lindsay was jumping up and down in the radio booth during the final 10 seconds of play and pouring out on the air, “Lord Stanley is coming home. You will always have a place in South Florida. Oh my God!!!”

VIDEO:

Inside the @flapanthers Radio Booth for the final seconds of the Stanley Cup-clinching Game 7 victory: pic.twitter.com/JtIXXZMSdv

— Doug Plagens (@DougPlagens) June 25, 2024

On the ice, there was the sight of general manager Bill Zito’s special assistant, Roberto Luongo, the Hall of Famer who owns virtually every franchise goalie record and won the fourth-most games in NHL history, screaming with tears in his eyes as he lifted a trophy he never could grasp as a player.

“It felt like two pounds. It didn’t feel that heavy at all,” said Luongo, who before Game 7 beat the heck out of pre-opening-faceoff drum. “I could lift it all night if I could.”

There was TV studio analyst Ed Jovanovski, the team’s draft pick at No. 1 in 1994 and a rookie on that 1996 Cup Final team, bearhugging anybody he could find — even this former Panthers beat writer, who left for Minnesota in 2005, telling me, “You’re part of this!!! You were here at the beginning.”

There was Randy Moller, the former defenseman who has been playing or working for the organization for 29 years, welling up and so appreciative of how Vinny Viola and minority partner Doug Cifu turned around this once sorry, laughingstock of a franchise after they purchased it in 2013.

“There were so many lean years until Vinny and Doug Cifu’s commitment,” Moller said.

And the most poignant, fitting moment demonstrating that was 75-year-old Rick Dudley lifting the Cup over his head like a feather. The former high-scoring, bone-crushing hockey player has been coaching, scouting or managing hockey teams since 1982. He has worked for nine NHL clubs — four as general manager.

Dudley was lifting the Cup for the first time in his long career, and it was impossible not to see the irony of him doing so while once again working for the organization he managed from 2002 to 2004 during the height of its dysfunction.

Now one of Zito’s senior advisers, Dudley had quite an eventful final season with the Panthers in 2003-04, at the center of a bitter power struggle with coach Mike Keenan.

Keenan was tight with the owner at the time, Alan Cohen, but Dudley initially won the war, first firing one of Keenan’s assistants and replacing him with a confidant, John Torchetti, then forbidding Keenan from coaching practices, and finally getting permission to fire Keenan and take over as coach himself on an interim basis.

But when Dudley was instructed to chop payroll heading into the trade deadline, he handed the reins to Torchetti for the rest of the season. Then two months after the season ended, at the start of the Tampa Bay Lightning–Calgary Flames Stanley Cup Final 20 years ago, Dudley was blindsided.

He was fired and replaced as GM by … “Iron Mike” Keenan.

Olli Jokinen captained that 2003-04 team after having turned, seemingly overnight, into a 36-goal All-Star in 2001-02.

“It’s been great to watch their success and the whole organization, that they’ve become something that we thought we could be 20 years ago,” Jokinen, now coaching in the Swedish Hockey League after three years in Finland, told The Athletic. “I have strong feelings toward the Panthers. That was home, and I played there for a long time. And obviously it’s the favorite team for me.

“It’s not a shame anymore to say, ‘Hey, I used to play for Panthers,’ you know? It’s now a positive thing. Maybe 10 years ago that was not that positive to say that.”

After original owner Wayne Huizenga sold the team in 2001, the Panthers became the poster child for dysfunction until Viola and Cifu arrived on the scene a dozen years later. Not that Viola and Cifu exactly changed things overnight. It took time to look under the hood and realize how big of a gong show they had bought — a franchise that couldn’t fill the lower bowl despite giving away freebie tickets in droves.

Before Viola and Cifu, employees used to be handed 80 to 100 vouchers and tasked with going out in the community and giving them away for free at gas stations, supermarkets and such.

It felt like every game had a promo: “Live in Lauderhill? Show your driver’s license at the box office, and get two free tickets, two hot dogs and two sodas!” The next game? You’d need a Plantation driver’s license. The next game? Miramar. The next game? Pembroke Pines. And so on and so on.

The Panthers devalued their tickets and left angry season-ticket holders watching as a family of four got better seats for free than the ones they were paying for.

Then there were the weird marketing themes. In 1999-2000, around midseason, the team had actors dressed as monks doing a bizarre routine before and after games. The tagline? “It’s a Ritual.” The monks would ring an obnoxious bell after each goal. It only lasted eight games because there were so many complaints, not to mention that the Panthers immediately went on a home losing streak during which they rarely scored.

Suites were given away at a fraction of their cost. Sponsors would get sweetheart deals, like pools built at their personal homes. One minority owner had his last name put on 8,689 lower-bowl seats. That was supposed to be for one year. It’s still there.

The Panthers ran through owners, GMs and coaches for years until Bill Zito was hired in 2020. There was always a sense that if the Panthers could figure out their off-ice issues and catch up to the quality of players they’d have on the ice at times, everything would be OK.

“It probably turned when Bill came,” Viola said. “It turned when Patric Hornqvist came. It turned when Matthew Tkachuk came. Just look at (Aleksander) Barkov — look at his play (in Game 7). Do you know how many odd-man rushes he saved?

“It’s not as much pride as it is, I’m humbled. I’m humbled because I know how hard everybody — from the skate sharpeners through our equipment manager — I know how hard they work.”

That’s also why so many alumni were thrilled to see the Panthers and their fans rewarded with a Stanley Cup.

There are thousands of things to do for your entertainment dollar in South Florida, but fans will show up if you give them a winner. But from 1996 to 2022, the Panthers didn’t win a playoff round, and from 1998 to 2012, they made the playoffs only once. Few markets could sustain such a run of ineptitude.

“For us, being there right at the beginning and seeing the rollercoaster that this organization’s been on for a lot of that middle time, it’s so satisfying seeing the last handful of years an organization run the right way and drafting well and putting pieces into place and making the right moves to get to this stage,” Jovanovski said. “Winning brings everybody together, and this is special obviously for the community, for this organization and for us to see what’s going on now.

“We got pounded by Vegas last year. We were banged up, and Vegas was a really well-oiled machine. To take that right from training camp, having guys say, ‘We’ll be back, we’ll be back,’ and just getting better from that experience, and then not accepting anything less, it says everything about the players, Paul (Maurice) and the stability Zito’s brought.

“It’s been fun to watch. Such a good team.”

Scott Mellanby was an original Panther and the second captain in franchise history. It was his snapshot of a rat at the old Miami Arena that inspired the “Rat Trick” and “Year of the Rat” that saw the flooding of the ice with thousands of plastic rats after every Panthers home goal in 1995-96. It’s a tradition that remains today, only now after wins, including hundreds that rained onto the ice after the final horn Monday.

Mellanby couldn’t help but think how Huizenga, original coach Roger Neilson, original team president Bill Torrey, and Bryan Murray, the second GM and the man who pulled off the Pavel Bure blockbuster trade in 1999, would have loved seeing the Panthers reach the pinnacle.

All four men, who are no longer with us, left their mark on the organization.

“When you work for another team, you don’t really cheer for a team,” said Mellanby, the former Montreal Canadiens assistant GM and now a senior adviser with the St. Louis Blues. “But I would be certainly remiss to say that this hasn’t brought back a lot of memories, because the Panthers are still special in my heart.

“I remember being in a van with Robbie Niedermayer and his mother and a few other couples and going around from mall to mall to do these Q&As that first August we were down there, to try to help promote the product, and there’d be like seven people sitting in these chairs asking us questions. It was truly a grassroots thing to build our fan base. We built it big in 1996, and there’s been a good core there, so I’m happy for the fans. There’s devoted, loyal, long-suffering fans that have been there and gone through a lot for a long time.

“I’m a part of that franchise. I always will be. It means a lot to me. It was professionally the biggest step in my life. And personally, I just got married that summer and had my kids there. I’m just glad the franchise has survived.”

“Yeah,” Mellanby repeated, “I’m just happy that it’s survived because it certainly didn’t always feel the last 20 years that it would.”

26 years ago, I was in this arena in a hard hat getting a tour. Finally covered a Stanley Cup championship here. Panthers fans deserve this pic.twitter.com/hjpx4wkkNn

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) June 25, 2024

Just like this version of the team didn’t feel it’d survive this series after watching a 3-0 lead over Edmonton evaporate before the historic Game 7.

But, Viola said, “My wife and I, we never, ever wavered. When they won Game 6, Teresa looks at me and goes, ‘This is great. We’re going to win it at home.’”

(Top photos of the crowd at Florida Panthers games from 2014 and 2024: Mike Ehrmann and Eliot J. Schechter / Getty Images)