One of the prevailing schools of thought, of which I was temporarily and regrettably enrolled, regarding an expansion team that unexpectedly expanded unprecedented horizons is that their fans didn't "earn" such immediate success. We can delve into the legitimacy of that claim later, but if who is/was deserving of what emotional toll is the question then the unwarranted torture that the Panthers' fan base has had to endure is just as much part of the answer as the current Viva of Las Vegas. I don't care how limited-in-size or retired-in-community Floridian hockey fans happen to be, because the amount of tough pills that they have been forced into swallowing on nearly a daily basis throughout this postseason would make the most resilient of elderly flush their will to wake up. Explicitly put, if the Knights have a Golden horseshoe up their ass then the Florida Panthers have a fist up theirs, and it's being given the most violent of spin seemingly every time the team whose construction was exacerbated predominantly by one organization's incompetence takes the ice. You could easily look at Reilly Smith's game-winning snipe in Game 4 as if it were a shot to the heart of the team that paid dearly to give him away...
However, to treat it as such you'd basically have to view said heart as having long been left cold and dead, as it belongs to a beaten body that's become more tattered than a Kanye West clothing line as Jonathan Marchessault has continued killin' it throughout the playoffs...
If the Panthers were made sick by having their praiseworthy playoff push fall one point short then it's their own front office that let the medicine that could have settled their stomach slip into the hands of an upstart organization that was well within its draft rights to exponentially boost its value more than Martin Shkreli. Even more unfortunate, that comparison somehow isn't limited to Dale Tallon voluntarily forfeiting 2/3rd's of a first line to an eventual Stanley Cup finalist. After all, let's not forget that it was the Panthers that literally left a 'Coach Of The Year' finalist sitting curbside like a piece of furniture that overstayed its welcome before seeing his candidacy consummated elsewhere. Call it an ironic twist on a tale of revenge. Florida threw out Gerard Gallant like yesterday's trash in search of the advancement of analytics, but - other than Marc-Andre Fleury posting an average rate of success that rivals Ted Williams playing tee-ball - there's hardly one stat that backs up the street smarts he's summoned in getting the absolute most out of his golden group of misfits. You need not look further than the nauseatingly repetitive and relatively uneducated criticisms of head coaches in hockey to see that, outside of the standings, the direct results of beneficial work behind the bench typically go unseen. For that reason, it's a rarity that's nearly as rare as the first year success of a franchise for someone to speak strongly about his personal approach to the game and see it immediately return undeniable dividends during the next game. Check the timestamps on the following sequence of events and Gerard Gallant's contributions to the most unlikely of underdog stories becomes as impossible to dismiss as the chemistry that exists atop his lineup...
As is the case with everything that's happened (but not stayed) in Vegas this season, trying to script the circumstances surrounding part-time 4th liner Tomas Nosek's first ever postseason goal would leave you with more of a headache than absorbing a punch from Mike Tyson and make you wish a lingering 'Hangover' was the only thing responsible for your writer's block. Having the type of unrelenting luck that would get your hands literally and figuratively removed in the backroom of every establishment within a two mile radius of an arena that has basically shown the brightest of lights on the phrase "the house always wins" has become par for the course for a team that's put off golfing as long as professionally possible. However, it bears mentioning that their serendipity-aided success had to come at the expense of someone, and that someone is an organization that was poorly run even before it became overrun by 'Murphy's Law' and a fanbase that probably feels as though they are stuck in a nightmare.
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