Florida Panthers: Dale Tallon and 7 Great Reasons to Be a Fan
The Florida Panthers joined the National Hockey League in the 1993-94 season along with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. They represented an attempt by the NHL to expand into non-traditional hockey markets in the southern US. Based in Sunrise, just west of Fort Lauderdale and north of Miami, they are still the most southerly NHL franchise in existence.
The Panthers started their history as a defensive trapping team. They parlayed that and the skills of former Ranger back-up goalie John Vanbiesbrouck into the most successful first season by an expansion team since 1967.
By their third year Florida was in the playoffs. They won successively more difficult playoff series on their way to the Stanley Cup finals. There they lost to the Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy lead Colorado Avalanche ,but they had collected an excited fan base by the end.
Since the 1996 playoff run it's been a long, sad story for the Panthers. Florida has only made the playoffs twice since then. They have only won one (1) playoff game since appearing in the Stanley Cup finals in 96.
For the last eight NHL seasons the Panthers have missed the playoffs. No other NHL team has that long a current streak of futility. If they miss the playoffs for two more years in a row they'll start approaching an historic level of NHL incompetence.
Well why then, you might ask, should anyone even think about becoming a Florida Panther fan. Here are the seven reasons that I hope will make you think that the time is ripe to get ahead of the curve and jump on that admittedly sparsely populated, Florida Panther bandwagon.
7. Buy Low, Sell High
1 of 8As my child-hood hero Tom Vu used to tell me every Saturday morning while I ate my frosted flakes in front of the TV, the key to success is to "Buy Low! Sell High!!" He used to yell that a lot, though usually at the end, because if he gave his secret away at the beginning, no one would watch the entire infomercial.
The Florida Panthers are unlikely to ever reach as low point as they are at right now. They are approaching an historical low water mark for any NHL franchise, ever. The NHL has been around for 93 years. That's low.
You get on board now with a team on this bad a run and they turn it around; you will look like a hockey genius. Get on ahead of a successful playoff run and you avoid that nasty 'front-runner' label that so many newly minted Blackhawk fans are getting stamped with nowadays.
Watching a team struggle also allows you to appreciate it when they overcome adversity. A team that wins all the time gets boring. People only notice when they don't win. A team that loses all the time? Well that is boring and depressing. A team that slowly develops from bad to good is interesting. There's a story arc there, something worth watching. There's nothing more fun then watching a team get put together and then come together to win it all.
That story is on the verge of getting started in Miami for the Florida Panthers. Buy in now.
6. Cheap Night Out
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The prices in Florida for season tickets and even ticket packages are low. You can pick and choose your location. It's a beautiful modern building to watch hockey in.
There are a lot of packages out there for Panthers games which again makes the whole hockey experience more financially viable.
The Panthers ran a name your own price promotion on season tickets in the off-season. They are serious about trying to get fans into their building.
Get in now before they start playing well enough to attract the fair-weather fan who will suck up the good vantage seats.
5. The Weather
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It was 70 degrees and partly cloudy in Miami yesterday. Outside the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise where the Panthers play, there are palm trees planted. No one is anticipating a freak snow storm coming along and killing all those trees.
Wednesday night in Calgary it was -8 Farenheit. Flames fans slogged through the snow pictured above to see a bad Calgary team, in decline, lose to the Phoenix Coyotes 3-1.
Anytime I could go to a hockey game in a t-shirt and shorts would feel just a little bit like heaven. If I could do that in December I'm not sure what I'd pay for a ticket.
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4. Tomas Vokoun
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Tomas Vokoun has been one of the best goaltenders in hockey for the last half dozen years. The Florida Panthers have given up the most shots on goal per game over the last three years by a wide margin. This former trap team has allowed defensive play to be ignored during that time and only Tomas Vokoun with his .919, .926 and .925 save percentages in the last three seasons has been able to keep the team close in games and close to the playoffs in the standings.
Vokoun at 34 is still one of the best goaltenders in the league. He's in the last year of his contract in Florida. A smart organization wouldn't squander the opportunity Tomas Vokoun gives them to succeed. A moderately good team with Tomas Vokoun behind them could go places in the playoffs.
3. Dale Tallon
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Dale Tallon was the architect of the Chicago Blackhawks team that won the Stanley Cup last year. He was director of player personnel in Chicago from 1998-2002. He was assistant GM to Bob Pulford in Chicago until 2005 when he became Chicago's General Manager.
From 2001 on, the Blackhawks drafted quality NHLers Tuomo Ruutu, Craig Anderson, Anton Babchuk, Duncan Keith, James Wisniewski, Brent Seabrook, Dustin Byfuglien, Cam Barker, David Bolland, Troy Bouwer, Jack Skille, Nicklas Hjarmalsson, Jonathon Toews and Patrick Kane. That's enough players to outfit several teams.
Tallon doesn't always make the perfect personnel decision. Signing Cristobel Huet to a long term contract in Chicago may be just about the worst signing I've ever seen. Still he is a hockey guy running a team that in the past has been reluctant to make hockey decisions.
So far Tallon seems to have been given free rein in Florida. He solved almost instantaneously problems that have dogged this team for years now. The acid test for Dale will come when he tries to spend some money on an offensive star to put this team over the top and into the playoffs.
According to capgeek.com the Panthers have over $9.5 million in cap space. The team in the past has shown a pathological need to sign their own draft picks with no discernment whatsoever. As well there has been a complete reluctance to add that talented, flashy (read expensive) player that might excite the fans and energize the offense, since Pavel Bure. If someone like that becomes available and Dale Tallon is allowed to sign him, that will be evidence that the Florida Panther's organization is dedicated to producing a good, competitive hockey team.
2. The Defense
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Anyone who has looked at the Florida Panthers over the last three years would tell you that their number one problem was defensive play. The last two years the team has given up over 34 shots against per game. That was the worst average in the entire NHL. The year before Tampa Bay ran their team with only two proven NHL defenseman and edged Florida out giving up 33.9 shots per game to the Panthers 33.6 shots per game. If it wasn't for that lack of planning in Tampa Bay, Florida would have been worst in the league for three years running.
Despite that there was never any attempt to address that problem. At times I had to wonder if Florida management even understood that it was a problem for them.
Dale Tallon was on the job on May 17th of this year. In August he signed little known penalty killing defenseman Mike Weaver from the St Louis Blues. The Blues had the best penalty kill in the league last year. Mike lead St Louis in ice time while shorthanded.
Tallon traded youngster Jeff Taffe to Chicago for veteran checker Marty Reasoner in July. Reasoner has also aided the penalty kill, added an element of defensive responsibility to Florida's forwards and provided some completely unexpected but needed offense with 10 points in 17 games.
Florida's penalty kill last year was 23rd in the league at 79.4 %. Right now it's 7th best in the NHL at 86.3%.
Weaver cost the Panthers $900,000 a year for two years and Reasoner's price tag is just over a million dollars. That's the kind of money that any Florida team could have afforded to spend to solve their biggest problem. Unfortunately no one in Florida until Tallon knew they could solve their problem by adding these, reasonably priced, players.
These moves, the addition of the puck mover Wideman and the development of Keaton Ellerby and Dimitri Kulikov have produced a Florida Panther defense that now gives up a middle of the road 30.7 shots per game. They're a long way however from being the worst defensive team in the league which they were, year after year after year.
1. The Young Talent
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The Florida Panthers have been drafting early for almost a decade now. They haven't been entirely successful. They have yet to draft that one superstar that makes the difference between winning and losing. While other teams have found their Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Drew Doughty, JohnTavares, Matt Duchene, Anze Kopitar or even Taylor Hall, Florida still stands and waits for one of their young draft picks to become a top ten NHL star.
The best of those draft picks, Nathan Horton, was finally packaged to Boston in the deal that brought power play quarterback Dennis Wideman to town. That deal had the triple effect of shaking all the other young Florida Panthers out of their complacency, adding draft picks and adding another offensively talented defenseman. If third overall pick Nathan Horton can be traded no one on the roster is or should be sacred; well except for Vokoun.
The Florida Panther lineup while still lacking that one great young player features a plethora of good young players. Much like the St Louis Blues of the last couple of years they seem to need only one or two more talented players to reach a critical mass.
Currently Florida has given up the fewest goals in the Southeast Division. They've had trouble scoring but they're still the only Southeast team other than Washington who has scored more goals than they've given up.
The young line-up features the aforementioned Wideman, David Booth, Stephen Weiss, Michael Frolik, Rostislav Olesz, Shawn Matthias and Dimitri Kulikov, all 27 years of age or younger. All these players could still develop giving Florida a huge ability to improve as a team without adding anyone. More offense could simply be generated through an improvement of just a few of these men.
Throw in prospects Kenndal McArdle, Michal Repik, and Keaton Ellerby and last year's picks Erik Gudbranson D, Nick Bjugstad C, Quinton Howden LW and John McFarland C and it's obvious the Panthers will have young talent to develop for years to come.
Add American Hockey League goalie, 20 year old Jacob Markstrom, and the Panthers may just have one of the deepest organizations in hockey.
This team is only one or two stars away from being a truly great hockey team.
Panther's Ice Dancers
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If nothing else brings you in, maybe this will
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