The hardest part is finding the faith again. It isn't easy locating something that has been missing for so long.

How do you start believing all over in the most bereft and maddening of South Florida's major teams? Where do you start after more than a decade of disappointment?

Here, Saturday night, was the logical perfect place. Any one of 82 games is negligible, but there is symbolic heft to a home opener -- especially for the one NHL team in most dire need of the sense of a clean slate, of things finally being different.

Instead, nothing sweet as the club began its 16th home season, just a 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils.

That meant Florida, after winning its regular-season debut in Finland, has since lost three in a row by a combined 14-4.

``It obviously isn't a quick start,'' coach Pete DeBoer said.

I think the new beginning needs a new beginning.

Panthers fans, the stalwarts who somehow manage to keep the faith in this franchise and nearly filled the building Saturday night, deserve a medal. What they get is free balled-up T-shirts shot from cannons and cute videos about ``more cowbells!'' How about giving them a playoff team!

FUTILE ROLL CALL

Few fans in professional sports have known the suffering of Cats fans, the halcyon days of rubber rats ever receding in the rear-view.

In the NFL only the Bills and Lions (each last in the playoffs in 1999) are company for the Panthers' misery.

In baseball the only longer playoff droughts are by the Rangers (last playoff in 1999), Orioles (1997), Reds (1995), Blue Jays (1993), Pirates (1992), Royals (1985) and Nationals (1981, as the Montreal Expos).

No NBA team has a drought even close to as long. In hockey the two droughts closest are by the L.A. Kings and dysfunctional Phoenix Coyotes, each last in the playoffs in 2002.

The bottom line: Of 122 franchises in the Big Four major leagues, only nine have playoff droughts exceeding Florida's NHL-worst.

To make matters worse, the club last won a playoff game in distant 1997.

BETTER DAYS

That is an eternity, enough to make a reasonable fan lose complete faith even in the simple concept of the law of averages. And the mire in which the Panthers are stuck is only magnified by the good relative fortunes with our biggest teams.

The Dolphins are (after all) defending division champions.

The Marlins have had consecutive winning seasons, have the league batting champ and a new stadium on the way.

The Heat has one of the NBA's premier players and a league championship recent enough to still resonate.

College football's Hurricanes are back on the national stage with Jacory Harris.

And by contrast here come the Panthers, sputtering down the boulevard in Jed Clampett's truck.

It isn't just the playoff drought that leaves the effect of a club on thin ice.

Florida's ownership is in flux, with Alan Cohen obviously wishing to divest but with the deal with that New York public consortium falling through.

SCANT SUPPORT

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, attending Saturday's game, said before the opening face-off that ``a rejiggering of the current ownership group'' will likely occur.

But what does that mean? More of the underspending that sees the Cats fail to hold onto their best players? How badly could Florida still use defenseman Jay Bouwmeester? The question is rhetorical. Goaltender Tomas Vokoun absorbs more shots (41 more Saturday) than most archery-range bull's-eyes.

Meantime the rudderless ownership goes to Broward County begging help in restructuring the debt on the arena.

(At least the club has an actual general manager now, after interim guy Randy Sexton finally was given the full title).

I asked Bettman if the ownership flux, financial issues and long playoff drought put the Panthers on his problem-franchise watch list.

``There is franchise potential, an opportunity,'' he replied. ``Issues they're dealing with can be worked out. They haven't yet been able to take steps forward like they've talked about, but they've held on.''

HOLDING ON

This arena will next see that much makeup applied so deftly when dinosaur rockers KISS play the building Oct. 22.

``They've held on.'' Those were Bettman's words. Except they haven't really held on along the historical timeline any better than they held on Saturday night when the Cats tied it 2-2 only to give up the losing goal and suck the life from the arena 1:48 later.

``The past is the past,'' Cats defenseman Jordan Leopold said of the slow start. ``We're a good team.''

Evidence, please. The kind of proof that stretches all the way into the playoffs.

As the building emptied on the latest disappointing start to a hockey season, a song promised optimistically, ``I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down.''

Well, we've seen about a dozen years of mostly the getting knocked down part.

Still waiting on the getting up again.

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