Inside the bold decisions, calculated gambles of the Panthers’ franchise-altering summer
The story, as Aleksander Barkov told it on the eve of training camp last month, started like this: The Florida Panthers’ trade for Matthew Tkachuk went down at something like 6 a.m. in Finland, so Barkov woke up to the news Jonathan Huberdeau, his career-long running mate, was headed to the Calgary Flames in exchange for a new All-Star winger.
The first person Barkov reached out to was Tkachuk, who answered his new captain by exclaiming, “Effing right” — it’s Barkov’s telling of the story, so it’s probable the profanity-averse center avoided directly quoting his new teammate.
It wasn’t the only conversation Barkov had, though. A little while later, the 27-year-old forward got on the phone with Bill Zito to talk about the trade. There were a lot of angles to discuss — from a hockey standpoint, Huberdeau was an All-Star for the second straight season last year; from a human standpoint, he and MacKenzie Weegar, the other NHL player in the deal and a star defenseman in his own right, had been fixtures within the organization for a decade — and a seismic change like this, to punctuate an offseason full of them, deserved to come with an explanation.
“That’s one of the best parts of this big change a few years ago. We’re communicating a lot better,” Barkov said. “Obviously, you don’t have to tell everything, but stuff like that … it shows respect, as well. You tell me, I’m going to tell you these things; and he’s going to tell you, you’re going to tell him. That’s how it works. That’s why we’re becoming better.”
In an offseason full of unorthodox decisions and out-of-nowhere moves, this trade — one of the biggest blockbusters the NHL has seen in more than a decade — was certainly the biggest gamble.
It also sent a message to the entire organization, the fan base and the whole league: The Panthers will not be complacent.
Paul Maurice and new philosophy
This is not the team Paul Maurice signed up to coach.
In his mind, it’s even better than he ever could have possibly imagined when he arrived in Florida in June.
His hiring was part of Zito’s first major gamble of his third offseason. Last year, the Panthers won the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time and won a round in the postseason for the first time since their run to the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals, and they did it despite former coach Joel Quenneville resigning in scandal in the first month of the season.
Andrew Brunette’s first shot as a coach could hardly have gone better. Florida won at a 118-point pace with Brunette, now 49, at the helm and it made the interim coach a finalist for the Jack Adams Award.
It was also, Zito decided, not good enough after the Panthers got swept out of the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs. Instead, the GM sought out something like Brunette’s polar opposite.
Enter Maurice. The 55-year-old Canadian has won the seventh most games in NHL history, but also lost more than anyone else. Whereas Brunette went all in on offense and wide-open play to make Florida the highest scoring team in more than 25 years, Maurice spent his first few days as coach focusing on physicality and board battles. Brunette, who’s now an assistant coach with the New Jersey Devils, might have learned from his experience, and grown and improved with this still-young team. Maurice, Zito believes, is better suited up help the Stanley Cup-contending Panthers win right now.
“We’re all driven by the same thing here. Everybody’s chasing. Yes, it’s a young team, but it’s a young team that’s had enough success that it knows it’s on the cusp and it’s hungry to get to the next level,” Maurice said. “I’ve been at it for a while. I’ve probably only coached two or three teams that really had a legitimate chance over those 20 years. Our biggest challenge each year is, Could we make the playoffs?
“These guys are onto something good.”
The team he fell in love with, though, did not have Tkachuk. It had Huberdeau setting everything up with no-look passes and odd-man rushes. It had Weegar and star defenseman Aaron Ekblad carrying the puck into the offensive zone themselves, and then barreling through the slot to score.
Florida, he said on the day he was officially introduced as the new coach, was the team he wanted to watch on any lazy winter night in Canada after he stepped down as the Winnipeg Jets’ coach last year.
At the time, he knew he was going to be picky about where he wanted to go next. He spoke to multiple other teams about their openings, he said, and yet the Panthers were the only ones to truly pique his interest.
Those nights on his couch, and later the feeling he could reshape them to be better suited for the Stanley Cup playoffs, were one part of why. Zito was the other.
“We had a 10-hour meeting, and I was back and ready to coach because I think this guy can push all the right buttons in this organization, and make us all better,” Maurice said. “Bill is an energizing guy. He’s a very bright man, who’s pushing every aspect of the organization with the question, How can we do this better? That’s what I was left with.”
He still could not fully process the Tkachuk deal when Zito first informed him of its possibility in July. Maurice joked it was the opposite of what Christmas was always like as a child, when parents might have to caution “Christmas is going to be a little bit thinner this year, so it kind of lowers the bar.”
“That one,” Maurice said, “was like your parents coming in, Hey, we could have a big Christmas this year.
“Tkachuk’s 24 years old and he’s also coming into his prime, so where our team’s at, what it needs, and having the courage to go out and say, This is what it needs, I’m going to get the players that are like that — that’s vision.”
Panthers’ great Matthew Tkachuk gamble
This is not the team Zito expected Maurice to coach.
Three months ago, the Panthers were engaged in extension talks with representatives for Huberdeau and Weegar. Both were set to become free agents after this season — the Flames have since locked both stars up for eight more years — and Florida had a good thing going. The big chance was supposed to be behind the bench, where Maurice was going to use his 24 years of experience to shepherd a young team to new heights.
Everything changed with one phone call and about two days of negotiations. Craig Oster, Tkachuk’s agent and uncle, called Zito on a Wednesday to tell the executive Calgary was willing to move Tkachuk and his nephew had the Panthers at the top of his list. The deal was done two days later.
It was shocking. It was risky. Above all else, it was bold.
“It wasn’t something that during the process of the evaluation post-season that we would even fathom could be possible,” Zito said.
Here’s the explanation: Tkachuk fits better in Florida’s timeline than Huberdeau and Weegar, 29 and 28, respectively; Tkachuk is also a better defensive player than Huberdeau and, according to point shares, was actually better than Huberdeau last year; the Panthers would struggle to fit both their former stars into their cap space, too.
Here’s the gamble: Florida gave up two core pieces for one star and its identity will change as a result; Huberdeau, aside from one injury-plagued season, was better than Tkachuk every year until last year; and there’s a sentimental piece no one can ignore, with Huberdeau holding franchise records for games, points and assists.
“I would describe it as vision,” Maurice said. “Vision for where they’re at right now, but also where are we two years from now, 10 years from now?”
The long-term vision is all great, especially because Florida begins the 2022-23 NHL season Thursday at 7:30 p.m. against the New York Islanders with the 13th youngest roster in the league, but the Panthers want to win now.
Everything they did in the summer was a tacit acknowledgment their plan wasn’t working. They had to try something new.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that obviously some of the attributes that Matthew brings,” Zito said, “are areas of the game that we could really use collectively.”
Tkachuk calls it “swagger.” His teammates, when they were opponents, called him a nuisance. Hockey traditionalists might call it grit or sandpaper.
Really, it’s competitiveness and an insatiable desire to finally win a Cup, and it’s the same one Zito has the same reason Maurice came to South Florida.
“Everybody’s on the same page,” Tkachuk said. “We all have a sour taste in our mouth.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2022 at 8:32 AM.
