George Richards, FHN Publisher
Mark Pysyk may have sold his place near Fort Lauderdale beach but he still has a lot of people to say hello to when his Dallas Stars visit the Florida Panthers on Monday night.
Pysyk spent four seasons with the Panthers and was as popular a player within the dressing room as there was.
Both he and Keith Yandle sat close to each other for much of his four years here, Yandle loudly cracking wise with Pysyk’s sense of humor a little more subtle but still quite biting.
It was a popular side of the locker room, no doubt.
Pysyk’s return to South Florida was supposed to come in January but the season-opening series between the Panthers and Stars was postponed due to a Covid-19 outbreak within the Dallas organization.
“It was supposed to be the first road road trip of the year but it was obviously cancelled and pushed back,” Pysyk said Sunday morning from Dallas.
“It is going to be a little weird going back to a place I spent the last four years. It will be weird, but it is a new journey and I am on this team now. Hopefully we can go in there and … get three wins.”
In what turned out to be his final season with the Panthers, there was always an underlying feeling Pysyk wouldn’t be long for the Panthers.
When Joel Quenneville scratched him for a number of games to start the 2019-20 season, it appeared his $3.5 million salary as a seventh defenseman was a real luxury on a cap-strapped team.
He would, for sure, be traded any minute now.
Only he wasn’t.
Quenneville threw Pysyk into the lineup one night on the fourth line and liked what he saw.
Although Pysyk alternated between being a defenseman and a forward, much of his playing time last season came as a forward.
Yandle started calling him ‘The Prius’ which, of course, was one of the first mainstream hybrid automobiles.
Once Pysyk got into the lineup, he was hard to get out and he went from being an afterthought at the start of the season to a valuable member of the Panthers.
He ended up sticking with the Panthers through the trade deadline and played in 58 games — not including all four in the postseason bubble.
Pysyk set career-bests with nine goals and 18 points including his first NHL hat trick in a February victory at Toronto.
Still it was not a surprise the Panthers let him walk as a free agent. It did not appear new GM Bill Zito made any effort to keep him.
Pysyk signed a one-year deal with Dallas at a bargain-basement price of $750,000.
For a guy who came over at the 2016 draft in a deal with Buffalo for Dmitry Kulikov and was protected in the much-debated 2017 expansion draft, the Panthers eventually let Pysyk go without much of a fight.
With the Panthers moving on from him, Pysyk said he sold his place in Fort Lauderdale and has moved on as well.
“I haven’t talked to too many of them, you know here-and-there, but everyone has been pretty busy this year with the games and the schedule,” said Pysyk, who has slid onto the fourth line at times this season but has mostly played a third-pairing defensive role in Dallas.
“It will be weird playing against guys I was with the last four years but that’s just the way this business is. It’s part of the job.”
On Sunday, Pysyk was asked about what he saw differently in the Panthers this season as well as whether he had briefed coach Rick Bowness and his staff on what the Panthers like to do.
Pysyk, in his typical quiet manner, said the coaching staff had been watching plenty of tape on Florida and really didn’t need his input on things.
“There were a few questions this morning about certain situations, face-offs and stuff like that but nothing too in depth,” Pysyk said.
“The coaches all put in a lot of time watching video and they have seen a lot of Florida as has every team. They did a lot better job than I could have with my knowledge of the guys. There wasn’t too much of that.”
Truth is, these Panthers are quite different since Pysyk last suited up for them in August.
Sure, his closest friends on the team — Yandle, Aaron Ekblad, Jonathan Huberdeau among them — are still here, but the Panthers have changed up enough of their lineup that his former team doesn’t look much like last year’s did.
Monday kicks off the first of three games between the Stars and Panthers this week.
Pysyk, certainly, will get to reacquaint himself with not only his friends on the Panthers but the new guys as well.
“I haven’t been paying too close attention, but I know their record and I know they are having quite a bit of success,” he said.
“There has been quite a bit of change, a lot of turnover. It’s a different team. Obviously there are a few guys still there, the core group that are having pretty good years so far. Things seem to be going their way right now.”
Dallas just needs to play some games after having the past three games postponed due to the results of the winter storm which crippled Texas last week.
The Stars have not played since Feb. 13 and were not playing all that good leading up to their forced hiatus with five consecutive losses.
The Panthers and Stars share a division for the first time this season and Dallas knows the Panthers are ready to get back after it following Saturday’s disappointing 2-1 loss in Detroit.
“They are one of the top teams in the league right now,” Bowness said of the Panthers on Sunday.
“They are playing really well. While they lost to Detroit, they very easily could have won that game after blowing them out 7-2 the night before. They beat Tampa, they went to Carolina and won there. They are beating everyone. That team is very much improved and are certainly one of the top teams in our division, top teams in the league.
“They are feeling it and are a confident team right now. … We know what to expect. There will be no secrets playing them. We just need to slow them down and disrupt their execution a little bit.”