One of the best story through the 2015 portion of the 2015-16 NHL season is easily the play of the Florida Panthers, the perennial basement dwellers who do meager attendance figures and just so happen to be first in the Atlantic Conference and tied for second in the Eastern Conference through 36 games.
Of course, you wouldn’t know that because absolutely no one is talking about the Panthers as a whole. Ageless wonder Jaromir Jagr is being discussed because he keeps playing, keeps scoring and lost some teeth the other day, but this is a young team that has been slowly cobbling together the pieces to become competitive and it is paying dividends through the first half of the season and no one seems to care.
This is where hockey coverage in this country breaks down and where the robust NHL coverage delivered by Sportsnet and TSN ultimately falls into the same traps that every other major sports website (and any website for that matter) succumb to.
The Panthers aren’t sexy. They don’t generate traffic. They have no buzz.
So even though their story is one of the most interesting to date this NHL season, far more time is dedicated to trying to decode what Steven Stamkos “hearting” a tweet really means, attempting to figure out what is wrong with Crosby, Malkin and the Pittsburgh Penguins and making sure that all things Maple Leafs are current and up-to-date at all times. Add in a cross-Canada tour to check in on the still better, but not playoff bound Oilers or the middling Canucks and you’ve got an idea of what you’re going to see on a daily basis in terms of hockey coverage and that sucks for teams like Florida that should be garnering far more attention across the league and in hockey circles.
If the playoffs started today, Florida would be the No. 2 seed and Detroit would be the No. 4 seed in the East, but you’d never know it because neither of those teams are ever mentioned in more than a passing manner (“Detroit played tonight…”) when Sportsnet or TSN are running back the important info from around the NHL the night before.
Sure, Canadians want to know about the Canadian franchises and each market wants to hear about their hometown team, but these surprising clubs shouldn’t be relegated to the background, only to be talked about when they make a rare appearance on one of their networks.
Florida is succeeding in the way many anticipated the Oilers would, having built around top draft picks Jonathan Huberdeau, Alexander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad, while surrounding them with steady veterans like Jagr, Jussi Jokeinen and Brian Campbell and quality goaltenders Roberto Luongo and Al Montoya. They’re not blowing anyone away, but they’re getting solid contributions up and down their lineup and the back end has been excellent, resulting in the Panthers standing as the biggest surprise of the year.
Yet no one seems to really be noticing and if they are, they’re certainly not talking about it.
And that sucks because we should be talking about the coolest stories – the stuff that surprises us and are positive and shows that organizations can layout a blueprint for returning to contention, draft well and rebuild accordingly, rather than just fixating on the latest dispatches from Canada’s seven hockey outposts (none of which sit higher than sixth in their respective conferences BTW) and the teams with the most sizzle.
High Five, Florida Panthers – congrats on a great first half and an impressive turnaround; hopefully more people are paying attention in 2016.
