George Richards, FHN Publisher
With all of the success the Florida Panthers have had this season — from being the highest-scoring team in the NHL to clinching a playoff berth with 13 games remaining — it’s easy to forget those days when things were not as good.
Ten years ago today, the Panthers were celebrating like a team who were all-too-familiar with the failures of their franchise’s immediate past.
On April 7, 2012, the Panthers knew they were in the playoffs by virtue of a loss in Washington a few nights before.
Florida’s loss to the Capitals — combined with a Buffalo Sabres loss — meant the Panthers’ NHL record 12-year postseason drought was finally over.
But on this night, the Panthers had a chance to make a little history.
With the Carolina Hurricanes in town, Florida was ready to put a lot of demons behind them.
And they did.
The Panthers took it too a Carolina team which had tormented them for so many of those 12-playoff-less years and pulled out a 4-1 win at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise.
The win handed the Panthers their first (and only) Southeast Division championship. Prior to that, Florida had never finished higher than third in the Southeast.
Four years later, Florida won the Atlantic Division championship and are in good standing to win a third divisional title this season.
But 10 years ago, the Panthers were an NHL laughingstock.
Until they weren’t.
”We had a revamped lineup and a lot of new guys but we seemed to gel pretty quickly,’’ said Ed Jovanovski, who returned to the Panthers as a free agent in 2011 as general manager Dale Tallon cut the roster to the bare bones before opening up the checkbook and signing a dozen players.
“We were pretty consistent throughout the year, didn’t go long stretches where we struggled too bad. We always found a way to keep it together. It was a fun year. It was a long drought for that team and it was good for everyone. When we got to the playoffs, we had a crazy building in those games. For me, coming back, it was a great first year.
“I wished we could have closed that series out in Game 7, but for me to come back to Florida where I had started, it was fun for me. For Stephen Weiss and some other of the younger guys who had never been to the playoffs, it was fun to see them experience how fun the playoffs really are. We were pissed off we didn’t win that series, how the season ended. But looking back, it was a great season for us.”
There was not a lot expected of the Panthers when the 2011-12 season opened, not with so many new faces.
Tallon, hired in 2010 to turn this moribund franchise around, traded everything he could in 2011 to clear up salary cap and roster space for the rebuild.
Going into the summer, no other team in the league had as much money under the $64.3 million salary cap as Florida did.
At the deadline, Tallon traded the likes of Bryan McCabe, Radek Dvorak, Cory Stillman, Bryan Allen and Dennis Wideman.
The cash dump at the 2011 trade deadline frustrated long-suffering fans and then-coach Pete DeBoer who reportedly clashed with Tallon so much the two rarely spoke during the final months of that season.
DeBoer wanted to win each and every game; Tallon was looking to build something to win in the future.
Florida lost 16 of its final 20 games after the trade deadline.
“It took a lot of pain last year to get ourselves in this position,” Tallon said then.
The Panthers fired DeBoer the day after that season ended in a move which came as no surprise to anyone.
He would come back to haunt the 2011-12 Panthers, however, as coach of the New Jersey Devils. That comes later.
In that 2011 offseason, one in which Tallon used the third-overall pick to draft Jonathan Huberdeau, the Panthers made it clear they were buying.
Like at the end of Trading Places when Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe were handing out trade slips, Tallon was wild in passing out contracts.
Florida went into that Huberdeau draft with only a handful of players under contract.
At the draft, Tallon pulled off a blockbuster acquiring defenseman Brian Campbell from Chicago in exchange for Rostislav Olesz. Tomas Kopecky soon followed.
“It wasn’t easy to leave Chicago,” Campbell said the day after the trade. “I enjoyed my time there and my fiancée is from there. But this is an opportunity.
“Obviously I’ve talked to Dale Tallon, I know what they’re doing there. This is going to be better for my career, going to Florida, playing a bigger role than I was in Chicago. I’m looking for a lot of opportunity. … I’ve already talked to a lot of ex-teammates who have said ‘get me there. I want to be there too.’ Dale will make this a very attractive place to play. We’ll get this organization going in the right direction, get the fans back.’’
Said Tallon: “He wants to play for the Panthers and that means a heck of a lot to me and our organization. I brought Soupy into Chicago and he’s willing to come down and turn this franchise around. That speaks volumes.”
Florida ended up not only signing Jovanovski, but also added goalie Jose Theodore and Scottie Upshall; Marcel Goc, Kris Versteeg, Sean Bergenheim and Tomas Fleischmann also joined the team.
All were instrumental in helping Stephen Weiss — the longest-suffering Panther of the bunch — finally make it to the playoffs.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Weiss said after the Carolina win, a Southeast Division championship cap on his head. “It’s a surreal feeling. It hasn’t been easy all year and it wasn’t easy tonight. That team pushed hard but we found a way to win and win the division, which is what we wanted.’’
Those Panthers did not end their regular season the way they wanted to, the win against Carolina snapping a five-game winless skid.
But it was a great season for a franchise which had not enjoyed too many of them leading up to it.
The 2011-12 Panthers ended up going 38-26-18 — getting a lot of points out of losing in overtime and the shootout.
Florida played its first postseason series since 2000 against DeBoer and the Devils and took a 3-2 series lead to Newark for Game 6.
The Panthers lost that game in overtime, then Game 7 in double-overtime on a goal from Adam Henrique.
“It was worth the wait for sure,” said Weiss, who had been with the Panthers since 2002.
“It was so much fun to be a part of hockey like that. Every little play means so much. I really missed being a part of it over the years. It’ll be a fun summer, getting ready to do this all over again. We set the bar. We have to go beyond this.”
