Panthers feel local buzz build during run. It’s why all-Sun Belt final four is good for NHL
It was a rare day off for the Florida Panthers in the middle of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs — a luxury they were afforded because of how quickly they beat the Maple Leafs in Round 2 earlier this month — and Paul Maurice was getting some chores done.
The first-year coach, once scrutinized by the fan base in the middle of an underwhelming regular season, hit the button to open his garage door, dragged his garbage bins to the curb and suddenly was hit with a parade of well wishes.
“Four people dropped by and said, Congratulations!” Maurice said Wednesday on the eve of the NHL Conference finals.
It was a change from where things were just a few months ago, and not only because the Panthers were mostly happy to remain anonymous as they struggled to just stay at .500 for most of the 2022-23 NHL season. South Florida has fallen for a hockey team in a way not seen since the Panthers made it all the way to the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals in only their third season of existence. They haven’t made it this far in the Stanley Cup playoffs since.
On Monday, they got to host their biggest game in a generation when they faced the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, with a chance to move within one win of the Stanley Cup Finals.
“It’s cool. I experienced it also in Anaheim — a smaller market where people don’t really know hockey players specifically,” said star defenseman Brandon Montour, who made it to the Western Conference finals with the Ducks in the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs. “You get further down in the playoffs, and more and more people are watching the games. And excited to come and pay attention to us. That’s what it’s all about.”
In its first five home games of the playoffs, Florida averaged an attendance of 19,674. Part of it is because FLA Live Arena is one of the biggest buildings in the NHL, but the Panthers were also filling it to 102.2 percent of capacity in the first two rounds — only three teams were filling their arena more, entering Monday.
Overall, these numbers have jumped from 16,682 and 86.7 percent in the regular season. Both ranked among the bottom seven in the league, although they’re significant improvements from before this four-year run of consecutive postseason appearances.
“Obviously, you get noticed a lot more,” Montour said. “I’ve had people pull up right to my house and actually just to say hi, which is a little weird, but nice, in a sense. You’ve got to enjoy this part. Take it with what you can and, like I said, just enjoy this whole run.”
Florida is not alone in these Conference Finals. All four teams — the Panthers, Hurricanes, Golden Knights and Stars — play in the Sun Belt and have been in their current market for 30 years or fewer. Only Carolina and Dallas have won Stanley Cups, and the most recent of those was way back in 2006.
From concern trolls on Twitter and in the media, there’s a line of thinking that this is bad for the NHL — and ratings for Game 1 of the East finals Thursday were down by nearly a million viewers from the Game 1 of the Rangers-Lightning series in the ECF last year.
It’s all short-term thinking, though. The Tampa Bay area and Las Vegas have become marquee markets because of their franchise’s sustained success — the Golden Knights led the league by filling T-Mobile Arena to an average capacity of 103.0 percent in the regular season and the Lightning were third in the league in total attendance — and the same is now happening for the Hurricanes, who were second in the league in total attendance in the regular season. As important as late-postseason television ratings are, day-by-day interest across the league’s 32 cities matters, too.
“When I was little, they weren’t the most competitive team, but they had their years where they did make playoffs. Obviously, there’s a jolt in the building,” said Carolina defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, who is from Pembroke Pines, went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for two years and grew up going to games in Sunrise. “I used to just run around this whole place. It’s a special building for myself. It’s where I learned to love the game.”
The city’s small-but-mighty passion was probably best displayed Wednesday when the team left the arena for the airport to fly and had a horde of fans there to send them off.
It looked a little bit like a pep rally — similar to what Miami had in March when it left campus in Coral Gables to fly to the Final Four — and was a unique scene compared to anything several players had experienced.
“I don’t think that happens everywhere,” superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk said Wednesday. “If people haven’t seen the fan bases in all the markets have been like, then they should probably watch the game and find out, because games down in Florida and here in [North Carolina] are two of the loudest buildings in the league, so they’re definitely really fun to play in.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2023 at 2:19 PM.
