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Emily Kaplan, ESPNOct 3, 2024, 10:03 AM ET
- Emily Kaplan is ESPN’s national NHL reporter.
Ten years ago, a photo from a Florida Panthers game went viral — and still lives in infamy. It was Florida’s third game of the 2014-15 season, against the Ottawa Senators, and it wouldn’t be an impossible exercise to try to count every fan in sight.
“That picture was right at puck drop. It wound up being around 7,000 for the night, but Canadian media were all over us — and rightfully so,” Panthers CEO Matt Caldwell said. “If you’re watching a professional sports team have crowds like that, it begs the question: Is this even worth it? Is this survival? Should the team be moved?”
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Fast-forward a decade, and the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are the toast of the hockey world. The team told ESPN it is close to selling out season tickets after a nearly 25 percent increase in attendance over the past two years (they averaged 18,632 per game last season), and a 123.8% jump in corporate partnership revenue in the same span. The South Florida market can be finicky and winning cures all, but the Panthers believe they have tapped into a sustainable model — with a legitimate chance to repeat this season. The Panthers have become a force.
“They have that demeanor where they’re confident, so they play that way,” said defenseman Brandon Carlo of the rival Boston Bruins. “And that’s tough to beat.”
At the NHL draft, it’s customary for teams to get on stage and congratulate the recent Stanley Cup winner. At the 2024 draft in Las Vegas, weeks after Florida hoisted its first Cup, not one team shouted out the Panthers. Joked GM Bill Zito: “Nobody likes us.”
A narrative of jealousy lingers around the Panthers. Between the weather and having no state income tax, it’s a destination franchise — especially now that they’ve built a winning culture. Players are willing to sign there for less. Florida is rarely on a player’s no-trade list.
But privately, it’s equal parts jealousy and admiration. In a copycat league, other teams are looking for ways to emulate the Cats. Said an Eastern Conference front office executive: “They are built the same way somebody who played the game would build a team. Everyone is trying to modernize and this and that. They have that ‘f— you’ in them. They focus on f—ing hockey. And they’re damn good at it.”
So how did Florida do it? ESPN talked to a number of front office executives and players about how the Panthers built a model franchise on and off the ice, and what lessons other teams can learn.
They put respect into the brand, and embraced who they were
Most conversations around the Panthers begin with the commitment from ownership. Vincent Viola, an Army veteran and self-made billionaire through business, bought the team in 2013.
“He said, ‘We are going to build this the right way. I don’t care if we deal with the noise of empty crowds or fans complaining; that’s growing pains,'” Caldwell said. “And we have to be disciplined. I give him credit, because we took some steps backward.”
The Panthers have one of the biggest arenas in the league, which was hard to fill. Its location, Sunrise, is an hour North of Miami (on a good traffic day) and it sits in the parking lot of one of the country’s biggest outlet malls.
A decade ago, the team’s finances were a mess. “We were all in New York at the time, before we moved down to Florida, and I kept doing trips — a couple weeks at a time — and every time uncovered more and more upside-down deals,” Caldwell said. “They were giving out a lot of free tickets, doing a lot of gimmicky promotions — things that would never help the brand long term. The cash position the company was in was very bad. They were losing a ton of money.”
The Panthers used some low price points to try to get more fans into the building. Courtesy of the Florida Panthers
Caldwell and Viola have backgrounds in finance. They rearranged the sales offices to mimic a trading floor and dug in with cold calls to those who were on the fence about buying tickets, explaining why things were changing but asking them to trust the process.
“We brought an immense personal touch,” Caldwell said. “Fans realized it was the chief operating officers and senior VPs calling and laying out our plan, not some college kids. And it worked.”
A few other strategies were also effective. First, the Panthers reidentified as hyper-local. The NHL team wasn’t going to convince people to drive from Miami — also home to the Dolphins, Heat and Marlins, not to mention beaches and nightlife. The Panthers were the only sports team in Broward County and leaned into marketing locally.
They also acknowledged that Florida was a tourism market. They knew their biggest draws were when Original Six teams visited, and didn’t hide from that.
“We embraced opposing fans,” Caldwell said. “We said, ‘We understand when the Rangers play or Boston plays, we may not change that loyalty.’ But it’s easier to convert a die-hard hockey fan living in the area to come to the other 39 games than a family that has never seen a game before. So we came up with tailored packages for them.”
All the while, the team invested in the community and focused on developing that next generation of fans by introducing them to hockey at a young age. Since 2013, the market has seen a 73% increase in youth hockey player participation.
“We don’t try to be something we’re not,” Caldwell said. “We’re very honest with ourselves, vulnerable, and just real. We like to double down on our strengths, and then improve our weaknesses, but not spend too much time on them.”
They took risks, but weren’t afraid to make mistakes
On the ice, the Panthers were stuck in a rut: spending money while not being good enough to contend, yet not bad enough to rebuild. Zito was hired as general manager in 2020 after an extensive search. A lawyer turned agent turned executive, Zito orchestrated some of the brashest moves the NHL has seen in recent years. Most came in the summer of 2022, after the team finally broke through by lapping the league in goals scored, capturing the Presidents’ Trophy and winning the franchise’s first playoff series in a decade. While seemingly making progress, they shook the whole thing up.
The Panthers switched coaches, hiring Paul Maurice, who changed the team’s playing style. Then they mortgaged the future, trading a homegrown star winger in Jonathan Huberdeau, an ascending defenseman in MacKenzie Weegar and a first-round pick for one player: Matthew Tkachuk.
The Panthers mortgaged their future in a trade to acquire Matthew Tkachuk in 2022. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)
In fact, the Panthers traded away first-round draft picks from 2022 to 2025. Not all of those risks worked out, but the front office kept making them anyway. With a dearth of homegrown prospects and nearly $15 million committed to two goaltenders, the Panthers needed to shop for bargains.
They’ve hit on quite a few, including their best defenseman, Gustav Forsling, whom they picked up on the waiver wire.
The Panthers stick to a guiding philosophy: Every player is scouted for his character. Players must be ultra competitive, but also humble enough to buy into Coach Maurice’s style, which is mentally and physically taxing. Zito said their vetting often includes questions like: How compelled are they by winning? What types of sacrifices have they made at previous stops?
Those traits are more important than past performance.
“We understand that every player has some flaws,” Zito said. “And we can worry about what they’re doing wrong, but we can also utilize and celebrate what they do right. Because no one is perfect. If you make a mistake, we’re not going to get mad at you. It’s, ‘Dude, I got your back. It’s fine.’ That helped them play. So it all comes back to trust. That puts people in the best position to be themselves.”
Zito, for his part, thinks it’s what drives them all.
“I think we can be a lot better, to be honest,” Zito said. “I know I can be. But when I make mistakes, there’s no doubt in my mind that the coaches, the staff and players would have my back. I think everyone has that feeling.”
They learned to put aside ego
Viola is generous in spending money outside of the salary cap, as long as there’s justification on how it can help. One place that shows up is in hockey operations. They established a first-of-its-kind goaltending excellence department, but can rationalize paying four goalie coaches because every goalie who has come in to play with Sergei Bobrovsky has pushed the starter while posting a career year himself.
Outside of three assistant general managers — whose backgrounds range from analytics to scouting — the team has three senior advisers to the general managers who were former general managers themselves. A rival front office executive pointed to this group as the Panthers’ secret sauce.
“Nobody talks about these guys,” the executive said. “But they’re so good. Every time we think we’re in on a player, we identify someone, the Panthers are already on it.”
Zito explains the process of getting together as humbling and educational.
“It’s these decades of hockey intelligence from completely different individuals,” Zito explained. “I mean, Rick Dudley, Paul Fenton and Les Jackson could not be more dissimilar. When we all get together, there’s arguments — heated arguments. But you never leave those meetings with a bad taste or your feelings hurt. Because you know the guy who challenged you on your scouting report is well-intended. There’s no agenda, nobody cares if they were the first to scout him or anything like that.”
Selflessness is a big theme in the Panthers’ locker room, too. Zito believes humility stems from his captain, Aleksander Barkov.
Humility in the Panthers’ locker room stems from captain Aleksander Barkov. (Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images)
“He’s the most selfless guy I know in daily life,” Zito said. “Being around him, you ultimately end up being a better version of yourself because he’s just that way. And if the lead dog is that way, that’s how you’re going to be.”
It continues with Maurice, who can be as hard as any coach in the league — but never forgets the human element.
Last season when the Panthers were drawing more after-the-whistle scrums than any team in the league, they had a reputation as the NHL’s bad boys. Like many teams, they have photos of the officials and their names taped to the bench. For the Panthers, the letters “STFU” were written under the officials’ headshots. That was a reminder from Maurice to Maurice to maintain discipline too. While Maurice has become famous for his quotable clips, he strays from being self-righteous.
The team changed identities from having a high-flying offense to a team built on relentless forechecking and physicality — in their Stanley Cup run, opposing coaches constantly commented on how Florida wore teams down by the third period. That takes total buy-in.
“I’ve never been on a team with absolutely no ego in it,” 57-goal scorer Sam Reinhart said.
Reinhart explained further what that looks like behind closed doors.
“You look at a guy like Chucky [Tkachuk], who’s got all the confidence in the world. He’s arguably a top-three producer in the league at any given time,” Reinhart said. “There was a stretch around the Eastern Conference finals leading into the [Stanley Cup] Final for about six games where he didn’t score. And no one would’ve ever noticed. I think we had won all those six games in a row. Not one guy could’ve told you that he hadn’t scored in six games. His personality didn’t change, his confidence didn’t change. Defending first, that was our mentality. When I look back on our run, that’s a moment I’ll always think of.”
They prioritized comfort and rest
The Panthers made it to the Stanley Cup Final a year before they won, in 2023, and by the time they got there they were hobbled and bruised by a litany of injuries. Florida players said after that run they reestablished the importance of a strong start to the season. They were clawing for weeks just to get into the playoffs, which added to the two months of mental and physical grind.
Maurice said he thought he’d have to go heavier for longer during last training camp. But he didn’t need to, because the players reported with a much more business-like approach.
Getting that close to the goal is the ultimate motivator, just ask Connor McDavid.
“You look at what Florida did going to the finals — gaining that experience and then coming back, and following it up, and winning,” McDavid said. “It’s a great experience playing with the Cup in the building, but a different animal. I think our group will learn from it.”
Losing in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final re-established the importance of a strong start to the season for the Panthers. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
So what did Florida learn?
“It gave us confidence in how to handle certain things, from a rest standpoint or a recovery standpoint,” Reinhart said.
While several people hinted that the Panthers made tweaks to workload management and recovery, Zito wasn’t willing to give away any specifics. It should be noted that in 2022 the Panthers hired an Australian, Dr. Chris McLellan, as their VP of sports performance. McLellan, a former professor, came from the National Rugby League. The Panthers love that he didn’t come in with any biases such as that had been the way things had always been done in hockey.
Based on fitness testing, Maurice said the Panthers reported to training camp in even better shape this season.
Over the past few years, the Panthers have understood the cost of winning — and again, it has helped that ownership has footed extra bills. Florida opened a $65 million practice facility in December, which is the envy of many in the league. Most players get there by driving their golf carts; many stay late because of the cold-tub/hot-tub setup, outdoor dining areas and pickleball courts. Caldwell points to COVID as an inflection point. With no games, the Panthers, like many businesses, were hemorrhaging money. Viola had already committed to paying his full staff throughout the pandemic. The practice facility project was underway. “The budget went up 25, 30% during that time,” Caldwell said. “And he didn’t blink at all.”
Also in that time, the Panthers upped amenities, like hiring a full-time chef. According to Caldwell, the team has also recently upgraded the team plane, food on the road as well as hotels.
“Everything they’ve done here makes it a first-class organization,” forward Evan Rodrigues said last spring, a year after signing as a free agent. “Why would you not want to play for a place that treats its players this well and is so serious about winning?”
The biggest sign that things have changed for Florida: Last month they extended their agreement with Broward County. With four years left on the arena lease, the parties extended five more years. The amended deal also includes giving the county two five-year options to extend the lease even further, at their full discretion. It was unanimously approved.
“They made a commitment to us and the arena,” Caldwell said. “And we wanted to show we were all-in.”
The Panthers know how fickle the market can be, which is why carrying momentum is so important. They’re the toast of the NHL now, but are hungry to win again — and be a model for years to come.
