Brian Murphy: Forget Toronto, Boston and Minnesota. Florida is hockey mecca. Rats!
Forget geography. Never mind history. And to hell with branding.
The center of the hockey universe in 2023 isn’t Canada, Minnesota or Boston, no matter what the provincial purists spoon-feed you.
Mecca is a rat-infested, strip-mall swamp on the edge of the steamy Everglades, and it couldn’t be any cooler if you’re a true hockey fan.
The Florida Panthers are fulfilling every NHL team’s spring fantasy, stepping over bodies in steel-toed Cinderella slippers and chortling into the Stanley Cup Finals like uninvited guests crashing an open bar.
Six weeks ago, they were afterthoughts, stumbling into the postseason as the White House Plumbers bumbled into the Watergate and infamy.
Today, the Panthers are industry disruptors of the third kind, piloted by alien assassin Matthew Tkachuk. This at-will goal scorer is redefining clutch by the hour while tightening his clutch on the Hart and Conn Smythe trophies as the game’s most valuable player morning, noon and night.
With Vegas on the verge of making this an all-palm-tree championship series, forget the myth that regions with outdoor rinks and black-and-white legacies somehow deserve this moment more.
Purists in Toronto can cry “Bettman hates us!” while explaining how they invented hockey in spite of being rejected from Lord Stanley’s exclusive party every year since hippies were tripping on Sgt. Pepper.
Apologists in Minnesota can yell “Florida shouldn’t even be in the league!” and remind their drinking buddies at the cabin that more players hail from here than any other state as they stare glassy eyed into the only cup they’ve ever sipped.
Bitter Beantowners can hoodwink everyone into believing they have a monopoly on sports suffering as if they fell into a coma in 1986 and just woke up last month.
Tired tropes, all of them. Cheap security blankets to cover up against the cold, hard truths of underachievement these dismissive hockey markets cannot bear to confront.
The Bruins, despite making history with 65 regular-season wins and 135 points, couldn’t defeat the eighth-seeded Panthers after taking a 3-1 series lead in the first round and having a one-goal lead with a minute remaining in Game 7, at home no less.
The Maple Leafs, despite a superstar roster of forwards that is the envy of the league, couldn’t last more than five second-round games against Florida after winning their first playoff series since 2004 – extending their Stanley Cup drought to 56 years.
The Wild, despite making the playoffs for the 10th time in 11 seasons, couldn’t get out of its self-loathing way against more disciplined Dallas and blew a 2-1 first-round lead for the second straight season while failing to advance past the second round for the 20th consecutive year.
All while the Panthers snuck into the playoffs as the final qualifier after the tanking Chicago Blackhawks somehow defeated Pittsburgh in the season’s penultimate game to crack open the door.
The 2021-22 President’s Cup winners under erstwhile Wild hero Andrew Brunette acquired Tkachuk from rudderless Calgary, retooled schematically with new coach Paul Maurice and morphed into a gritty, fearless playoff wrecking ball that comes to play every night, not whine about what could have been.
How novel. Of course, that’s just my narrative.
The Panthers are back in the Finals for the second time in 27 years while the Wild preach patience about building something special every year since 2000.
They are turning the NHL on its head again, just like 1996, when Florida upset their way into a Cup clash with the Colorado Avalanche.
When Scott Mellanby fatally smashed a scurrying dressing room rat into the wall and created the fad of fans hurling toy rodents onto the ice whenever the Panthers score.
How fitting since Sunrise, the steamy afterthought on the edge of the Everglades, couldn’t even figure out what to call itself when the city was founded in 1961 by an Iowa-born developer.
Norman Johnson bought 2,650 acres of alligator entrails for $9 million. Originally called Sunset Village, the retirees among the 4,000 residents who first settled there apparently thought the town name edged too close to their mortality, so it was changed to Sunrise.
By 1998, there were 80,000 people there. A corporate park, sprawling shopping mall and world-class arena buffeted the Broward County bog from the sprawling Fort Lauderdale and Miami suburbs.
Plenty to put Sunrise on the proverbial map. Just not Google’s.
For a stretch in 2010, motorists searching for a digital path to Sunrise were instead directed to Sarasota, some 200 miles west.
Ah, Florida. Where America goes to give up. While its hockey team refuses to die.
How novel indeed.
