Can The Battle of Florida Be A Real Thing?
By Scott Burnside
At one point during a pre-training camp rookie tournament in the Tampa area there was discussion of a pickle ball competition between Florida Panthers staff and their counterparts with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
There is lots of history between Florida head coach Joel Quenneville and Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper and Cooper offered some suggestions to the Panther contingent on where to get out in the evening during the rookie event.
The owners of the two teams, Jeff Vinik in Tampa Bay and Vinnie Viola of the Panthers, have a strong connection.
Florida GM Bill Zito is good friends with his counterpart in Tampa Julien BriseBois, not to mention having enormous respect for his work as a team builder.
“There’s a great level of respect and cooperation, plus they’re just wonderful people,” Zito said of the Lightning organization.
But — and you knew this was coming didn’t you — the yin to the yang of the sympatico relationship between the two state rivals, is the expectation of something much closer to enmity on the ice.
And that’s a good thing for the two teams, their respective fan bases, grassroots hockey in the state and ultimately the NHL as a whole.
The Battle of Florida. For years it was a thing in name only and then hardly that.
Jay Feaster was the GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning when they won their first Stanley Cup in 2004 and has circled back with the team in recent years as a top executive – his current title is senior vice president of legal and business affairs, although he still is heavily involved in community events – and he recalls for a time there was actually a Governor’s Cup that went to the team that won the regular season series.
“There was a trophy but honestly I don’t know where it is,” Feaster said recently.
While both teams have seen their share of trials and tribulations, Tampa Bay has left the Panthers in the dust in terms of competitiveness in the last decade.
Since 2015 the Lightning have advanced to a Stanley Cup Final, losing to Chicago, twice advanced to an Eastern Conference Final losing to Pittsburgh and Washington, won a Presidents’ Trophy and now won back-to-back Stanley Cups.
For a Panther team that has not won a playoff series since their improbable run to the 1996 Stanley Cup Final, there remains a David and Goliath dynamic when it comes to the Lightning.
But last spring the first signs of a change in that dynamic emerged.
For the first time ever the Panthers and the Lightning squared off in a playoff series.
The Panthers actually owned home ice by virtue of their strong regular season that saw them finish second in a COVID-revamped Central Division, four points ahead of Tampa. The series might have been the most compelling of any during the ’21 playoffs. Especially early on there was unbridled disdain on display from both sides of the series. There were borderline hits and wild swings in momentum.
Sam Bennett, picked up by Florida at the trade deadline, was suspended for a game for burying Blake Coleman from behind.
Veteran Tampa Bay defenseman Ryan McDonagh might have set a single-series record for uncalled fouls.
Adding to the high drama highly touted goaltending prospect Spencer Knight, weeks from the end of his collegiate career at Boston College, stepped into his first NHL playoff action in an elimination game in Game 5, gave up a goal in the first shot he faced and then closed the door for the Panthers to force a Game 6.
The Lightning won that game and went on to win their second straight Cup.
But the dye has been cast.
Or at least that’s the belief as we roll into 2021-22. Now it’s up to the Florida Panthers to ensure that this becomes something more than a paper or theoretical rivalry.
“It’s elementary,” Zito said. “Because you have the measuring stick right here, all the time. That’s the gold standard. So that’s great. So now we have something to compare ourselves to and for our fans there’s a point of reference.”
“Hopefully we can hold up our end of the bargain and continue to evolve,” Zito added.
It is both a cliché and truism that to succeed one must first fail, before one can run one must crawl and then walk. And the feeling Zito got from his group in exist meetings with players and staff was that such a metamorphosis is underway as a result of the disappointing loss to the Lightning.
“I think my initial reflection was we ran out of time,” Zito said. “They didn’t. They managed their time. I remember thinking, they knew how to win this series. They had done it before. And what would our guys take from this?”
Zito recalled the general consensus from the players was their desire to get right back to it, to begin the process right away.
“It was, let’s go right now and do it again,” Zito said. “That made me excited.”
There’s a whole layer cake of factors that go into growing a sport, making a market strong, creating a bond between fans and a team.
In Tampa Bay owner Jeff Vinik’s commitment to the team has seen wholesale physical changes throughout the Tampa area and specifically around the team’s downtown arena not to mention his unfailing support of the hockey operations department.
But Feaster acknowledged it’s a whole lot easier to sell the game and connect with fans if you’re team is a two-time Stanley Cup champion and a perennial contender.
The longtime executive noted that Florida may not have had that kind of success, but that ownership has committed to growing the game at the grassroots level and that youth hockey in the South Florida area may actually be slightly ahead of where the Lightning are at.
“And now I believe that the Lightning look at that organization and that team and how well-managed they are with Billy and how well-coached they are with Joel and that is a team that’s going to be nipping at our heels,” Feaster said.
If that is the case, then interest in the sport as a whole across the state should grow as a result and if the Panthers do become something more than the poor country cousins to the powerful Lightning, then the game and the league as a whole will be stronger as a result. According to USA Hockey the number of male and female players under the age of 19 has risen about 20% since 2014-15 and that includes recent seasons impacted by COVID-19.
As for the Panthers, well, the reality is they have a long history of turning promise into disappointment.
It’s why the focus for Zito and his team, bolstered over the offseason with the arrival of Sam Reinhart acquired from Buffalo and future Hall of Famer Joe Thornton, is on what is in front not what is behind.
“Whatever’s happened before doesn’t matter. It wasn’t us,” Zito said. “And nothing’s going to matter to the fans if we don’t worry about this team and this year. The Tampa series doesn’t matter. What happened last year doesn’t matter. Now we have to actually do it. We can’t lose focus of that. It’s not going to be easy.”
It’s not going to be easy to be sure. But it should be damn fun to watch.