RogerRoger
Registered User
- Jul 23, 2013
- 5,337
- 3,518
It seems like I'll have to learn Spanish or French to get some lively playcalling.
Series Talk: SCFs Discussion - All The Smoke Edition Part II - Panthers Tied 1-1
- Thread starter Chaos2k7
- Start date
It seems like I'll have to learn Spanish or French to get some lively playcalling.
Boothinator
@MrBoothinator
- Sep 19, 2009
- 6,245
- 3,926
RogerRoger
Registered User
- Jul 23, 2013
- 5,337
- 3,518
barkovcanfinnish
remember to breathe
Barkov not sure. Reinhart could still have lingering effects from the Aho hit. Who knows
Tkachuk and Forsling haven’t looked like their usual selves most of these playoffs. I’m sure we have other guys dealing with shit too but they’re the most obvious
- Mar 21, 2006
- 12,863
- 15,058
A gem from the Bruin board. (Image not link.)
CatscratchFever
#CatsAreComing
We have to appreciate this squad destroying themselves to make us proud.
- Mar 21, 2006
- 12,863
- 15,058
Meanwhile, lil bros in Tampa are pissed and salty
drktmplr12
Registered User
drktmplr12
Registered User
WaitingForThatCab
Gas up the Lombo
- Mar 11, 2017
- 15,084
- 33,610
If I had to root for Nikita Kucherov and look at Nick Paul's face for 82 games, I'd probably be like that, too.
NHL teams thrive in non-traditional markets, from Texas to Florida | TSN
Popeye Jones was an NBA rookie with the Mavericks the same season that Dallas debuted its new NHL team, and he decided to go to a Stars game after meeting future Hall of Fame player Mike Modano.
www.tsn.ca
Popeye Jones was an NBA rookie with the Mavericks the same season that Dallas debuted its new NHL team, and he decided to go to a Stars game after meeting future Hall of Fame player Mike Modano.
“I couldn’t figure out hockey. They were jumping over and off the ice … I’m like, 'what’s going on with this sport?'" Jones said. “The puck flew up, I remember it hit somebody in the nose, blood was all over the ice and they kept playing.”
Back during that 1993-94 season, before he became a hockey dad, the 6-foot-8 Tennessee native who had grown up playing basketball, football and baseball was like many people in the South: He knew nothing about hockey even as the NHL was making a push into non-traditional markets.
Those days are long gone. NHL teams in the South are playing for and winning the Stanley Cup in packed arenas and there is steady growth when it comes to youth participation. Football may still be king in many Sun Belt locales, but hockey has been welcomed from Las Vegas to Texas to Nashville to North Carolina — and certainly in Florida.
Jones has two sons who are now NHL players. Seth Jones, a defenseman for the Florida Panthers, is playing in the Stanley Cup Final after the 12-season veteran, the fourth overall pick by Nashville in the 2013 draft, was traded from Chicago to the defending champions in March. Caleb Jones played for the Los Angeles Kings, his fourth team the past seven years.
The expansion Panthers came into the league with Anaheim in 1993-94, at the same time the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas. The Tampa Bay Lightning and Ottawa Senators were expansion teams the previous season, and the Hartford Whalers moved to Carolina and became the Hurricanes in 1997.
Shane Willis remembers playing with the Hurricanes following the NHL's arrival in North Carolina — a process featuring a two-year transition to Greensboro before moving to Raleigh — and sometimes noticing a sparse home crowd during warmups.
“I’m like, ‘Is anybody coming?’” said Willis, now Carolina’s manager of youth and amateur hockey after five seasons as an NHL player.
That isn’t the case now, with Carolina having won a Stanley Cup in 2006 and currently on a seven-year run of winning at least one postseason series, including this year's run to the East final.
Southern success
This is the sixth season in a row a team from Florida has reached the Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are there for the third year in a row, this time in a rematch against Edmonton. Tampa Bay also made it to the final three straight seasons, winning the Cup the first two.
The Lightning's run began by beating Dallas in 2020 in what is still the the “southernmost” Stanley Cup Final — except that entire postseason was played in Canada after the regular season was shortened because of the pandemic.
Dallas made its third West final in a row this year, coming up short of another Cup chance. But they were the first Sun Belt team to hoist the Stanley Cup in 1999, followed by Tampa Bay in 2004.
Every game in the conference finals in 2023 was played in the Sun Belt, a first. The Panthers beat Carolina in the East like they did this year, and Dallas lost to Vegas in the West.
Popeye, Mo and Sakic
Popeye Jones met Modano after getting invited to do an appearance during a Dallas Cowboys game.
“Not being a hockey fan, I really didn’t know who he was and he didn’t who I was. But we just struck up a conversation and started talking,” Jones said. “Just general talk about sports and whatever, and he was such a nice guy and I enjoyed sitting there and talking to him.”
That helped Jones become a Stars fan. They both played home games at the since-demolished Reunion Arena before Jones was traded to Toronto and later Boston, homes of two of the NHL's Original Six teams. His only season playing in Denver was 1999-2000, when the Avalanche lost to the Stars in consecutive West finals before winning the Cup in 2001. It was there that he got to know Avs star Joe Sakic, another future Hall of Fame hockey player and now the team's president of hockey operations.
Jones’ oldest son, Justin, came home from school one day in the Denver area and said he wanted to play hockey, which had a significant influence on Seth, who was 5 or 6 at the time. With his sons interested in playing an unfamiliar sport , Jones sought advice from Sakic, who said the boys needed to take skating lessons.
Seth Jones started playing hockey in Colorado, but was born in Texas and was on some Stars-affiliated youth teams after his dad later returned to the Mavericks.
“When I was there, you could see more and more kids starting to play in Texas,” the 30-year-old Panthers defenseman said. “And then really the past eight to 10 years, you see kids actually moving from the northern cities down to Texas because the hockey has really grown. Where before, all the good kids out of the southern cities would move up north to Chicago and Michigan and New York and these places.”
More and more players
The number of players registered with USA Hockey has grown significantly in Southern states over the past 20 seasons.
USA Hockey said 4,793 players registered in North Carolina for the 2005-06 season, with roughly 2,400 of those being 18 or younger. That overall number of players jumped 19.5% (to 5,728) for the season following their 2006 Cup run.
By the 2024-25 season, the state had 8,698 players (up 81.5% from 2005-06) with 5,608 being 18 or younger (up 135.5%), though Willis noted the actual number is likely higher since not all players register with USA Hockey.
The total number of registrations have increased even more in Florida and Texas over the past two decades.
In Florida, the total number of players has gone from 9,363 in 2005-06 to 22,888 (a 144.5% increase), with the number in the 18 or younger age groups nearly doubling to 10,277. Texas went from 7,017 to 17,346 total registrations (147.2%) in that same span, with those 18 and under going from 5,457 to 7,199 (31.9%).
Pete DeBoer, the Stars coach the past three seasons, had his first NHL head coaching job with Florida from 2008-11. He recalls the Lightning and Panthers then playing before sparse crowds with questions about whether those teams would even stay in those markets.
“To see where they’re at now is really impressive,” DeBoer said before the team fired him this past week. “Dallas for me is a perfect example of coming into a place and, you know, getting a foothold at the grassroots level, and that the amount of rinks, ice surfaces and facilities and kids playing minor hockey here in Dallas is way bigger than I ever anticipated.”
Much of that came as a result of the 1999 Stanley Cup for the Stars.
“They won, they captured the city’s attention and all this stuff got done. Rinks got built,” DeBoer said. “I think Florida didn’t get that done early, but is doing it now and they’re going to reap the benefits of that. I think when you get a team that wins and it’s in a non-traditional market, I think the benefits roll out for decades.”
Introducing the game
For the Hurricanes, early outreach included going to area schools and essentially running PE classes as an introduction to the sport. The team, aided by grant money from the NHL, has more recently purchased equipment such as balls, sticks and Hurricanes-logo apparel to donate to more than 100 schools. The team this year partnered with Raleigh suburb Apex to open two public street hockey rinks.
Carolina, Dallas and Florida all have tie-ins to to the “Learn to Play” umbrella program created by the NHL and NHL Players’ Association to introduce boys and girls, and even adults, to the sport. Those programs include variations of providing hockey equipment and instruction, and on-ice workouts at multiple rinks in their areas.
"What you have to do is not only introduce the game of hockey to people, you have to introduce your brand. You have to make both things very attractive to parents to want to get involved,” Willis said. “I see so many parents now, they come to games and we talk about it: if you can create a hockey player, whether it’s street hockey or ice hockey, you’re creating three fans. Because that kid is going to come to a game with Dad, Dad and Mom, maybe a sibling. So then you’re in the range of three to four fans you’re creating.”
Popeye Jones knows how that can go, recalling a time when Seth Jones was 11 or 12 and the family wanted him to find something else to do in the summertime.
“A kid called and said hey they had some ice, you want to come and, you know, play some pickup hockey. At first I didn’t want him to, but I saw he was moping around the house,” the elder Jones said. “I told him to get his stuff. I’ll never forget it, he got this bag together so fast and got in that car and I was driving him to the rink and I looked at him and I saw this big grin and I said, ‘Well, I guess I got a hockey player.’”
Last edited:
Another great read I found on HFBs:
www.nhl.com
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Brad Marchand has nowhere to be.
He is sitting, feet up, curled into a locker in an empty Florida Panthers dressing room FaceTiming with his youngest, Rue, four days before Game 1 of his fourth Stanley Cup Final.
Fourteen years have passed since his first, years in which he has transitioned from brash rookie forward to seasoned veteran, a player constantly on the edge of suspension to a captain in the NHL to a hired gun after 1,000 games with one team.
That 2011 Final seems like a lifetime ago, with Marchand and Dallas Stars forward Tyler Seguin the only two still playing. But somehow it is also the one that most closely aligns with where he is in his 16th season, entering the final round of the playoffs unencumbered, free of responsibility, stress or expectations.
He was 23 years old then, with all the bravado and naivety in the world, an entire career ahead of him. Now he’s 37, most of his playing days behind him, treating this Final as potentially his last.
“I honestly feel less stressed now going into this Final than I did in the first round of the last five playoffs I was in,” Marchand said in a lengthy sit-down with NHL.com. “I’m just so excited for it. I’m not nervous about it at all. At the end of the day, however it plays out, it’s going to play out.
“Statistically, it’ll most likely be my last one; hopefully it’s not, but that’s just how this game works. I’m just going to enjoy every second of it.”
His first Final came at the end of his rookie season with the Boston Bruins, a magical time in which he vaulted from a fourth-line role to the top-six place he would occupy alongside Patrice Bergeron for the next 12 seasons.
He would win the Cup that season in an epic seven-game series against the Vancouver Canucks.
He’s still chasing a second championship.
The Bruins would reach the Cup Final two more times in that era, losing in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and in seven to the St. Louis Blues in 2019. Marchand’s elation would be replaced with heartbreak, with the understanding of how lucky he had gotten, how hard it truly is.
He has another chance with the Panthers, who are set to face the Edmonton Oilers in the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. Game 1 of the best-of-7 series will take place at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
Marchand, who was acquired by the Panthers on March 7 prior to the Trade Deadline, has been a fit beyond what they could have anticipated, not just for his on-ice production or the way he has elevated a line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen, but for everything else.
“What I didn’t know (before he arrived) is what Gregory Campbell did, is his incredibly positive spirit,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said of its assistant general manager, who played with Marchand for five seasons in Boston. “Guys that are vocal and intense sometimes will get up and down your bench, screaming at your bench, they just get so wired in the game and he never does that. It’s always positive. It’s always stay in there, hang in there.
“So, we get these two, especially ‘Lundy,’ young guys playing (with someone) bordering on legendary status at this point and he’s pumping their tires and he’s just like, every day excited. It’s his personality that I didn’t know, but he’s moved into the Matthew Tkachuk hate them (realm) -- that’s a horrible word, but it’s close -- and then they get here and you go, ‘You’re the exact opposite person that I thought you were.’”
He's also a person who understands where he’s been in this game, how difficult it is to get here, and the dwindling time he has left.
Which is why he’s grabbing onto this run with both hands.
“I’ve been on the best regular-season team to ever put skates on, and we didn’t accomplish anything,” Marchand said, referring to the 2022-23 Bruins, who set the NHL record for wins (65) and points (135) before being stunned by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference First Round. “You never know. You can be a great team on paper and do extremely incredible things in the regular season, but so many things have to go right to make the Final, to make a long run. It’s so hard to predict with any team.
“I hope it’s not [my last]. But realistically I have a few years left. Hopefully I can have another run, but if not, hopefully can take advantage of this one.”
* * *
It has been a roller coaster of a season for Marchand, starting with the three surgeries he had last summer, the season without a new contract, the 4 Nations Face-Off win with Canada, the divorce from the only NHL team he’d known and which he captained, the relocation to South Florida, the time spent away from his family.
“It was a lot,” he said. “It was a lot of stress.”
Last summer, Marchand knew he would have to have surgery at some point. No time was optimal, with the procedures putting the 4 Nations or the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics at risk, not to mention his status without a contract beyond the 2024-25 season.
“It was a tough summer,” Marchand said. “There were tough choices.”
He went for it then, with repairs to his elbow for a torn tendon, his groin to address a sports hernia and his abdominal area, also for a sports hernia. He started the season having taken three months off, knowing he had to play catch-up, with his conditioning, strength and power behind.
Still, the pressure was on from the outside for that contract.
“Your stats aren’t where they are and you’re not making the plays you normally make,” he said. “Yes, you know that. But there’s still a lot of noise that comes with that. I felt like I was trying to do the right thing, to be part of the group. There’s still a lot of heat that can come with that when your numbers and your game’s not where it’s supposed to be, where people expect it to be.”
It was all new to him. And, as he put it, it was something he “didn’t handle as good as I would have liked to.”
It still bothers him. Nothing more so than the contract situation.
“I didn’t really expect to have the contract negotiations that I had,” he said. “I thought that was going to go a lot different, which obviously I think impacted me mentally this year a lot. And I was frustrated by it. I never pictured even entering the season without a contract.”
He never pictured any of it.
“I didn’t really want to play contract years out because I never really wanted to have that stress. I always wanted the security of maybe take a little less and you get a deal done early and you have the security of it being done and you can just worry about playing hockey,” he said.
“I find when you go into a season playing (without a contract), things matter. Your stats matter more. So, it doesn’t just become about the team. When you’re on term and you’re on a contract, it can be all about the team and you can sacrifice whatever you need to to be part of the team. But in contract years, you can’t do that. You have to be a little bit selfish.”
It’s a weight, a different -- and, for Marchand, unwelcome -- lens through which to view his play amidst the play of the team he desperately wanted to succeed.
“You want to play through injuries, but you play through an injury and you’re not playing well and it affects contracts,” he said. “So, you’re trying to do all the right things, but it’s not always that easy.”
And had the season gone differently for the Bruins as a whole, Marchand believes he would likely would have remained in Boston. But after he didn’t sign at the start of free agency last season, after the contract negotiations with goalie Jeremy Swaymantook up most of the oxygen all summer, after the Bruins started slowly and fired coach Jim Montgomery in November, after injuries and underperformance spiraled, after the Bruins decided to sell, his fate was sealed.
Boston traded most of its assets, including its captain. Marchand did not have the power and/or force a trade to Florida, just an eight-team no-trade list. But the Panthers were the team that Marchand thought had the best chance to compete for the Cup.
He was right.
By the time Marchand is saying all this, as morning becomes afternoon at the Panthers’ practice facility, most of his teammates have vacated the premises. Many of them have families, kids, people to spend time with during the brief interregnum between the conference final and the start of the Cup Final.
Marchand doesn’t.
As a Trade Deadline acquisition, he is just here to play hockey. He has no outside responsibilities these days, a rarity for a man with three kids and a wife and a house and all that entails.
“My family’s not here, so literally the only thing I have to do here is to focus on hockey and to recover and to rest and to get my mind prepared for games,” he said. “And then, when I’m at the rink, the only thing I have to do is focus on me. I don’t have to try to manage everything else and worry about a whole team. I just worry about what I have to do to put my best game on the ice.”
It’s not what he’s used to at home, not with a teenager, an almost-8-year-old and a 3-year-old. When they’re up at night, outside of playoffs, he’s up and helping. When they’re up in the morning, so is he.
Here, he can sleep as much as he wants, bed at 10 p.m., wake up at 10 a.m. Naps, whenever.
It has been a boon for someone trying to make the most of the opportunity.
He will take the rest and the focus and the FaceTimes, will push all his energy into achieving what they all want, what he could sense they were headed toward even as an opponent earlier this season, and especially when he arrived in Florida. Marchand was acquired for a conditional NHL Draft pick that became a 2027 or 2028 first-round selection when Florida reached the conference final with Marchand playing at least 50 percent of its playoff games.
Marchand has been impressed by how the Panthers do things, the way they train and interact, the lack of cliques, the commitment and focus. It reminds him of his early days with the Bruins, but with a training staff beyond anything he’s seen.
“People undervalue how much that impacts a run,” Marchand said of how a team interacts off the ice. “There’s a reason that you hear that about every team that wins, like ‘Our group is so great.’ You want everyone to buy in, sacrifice, and be part of something, you need to have really good people on the same page, that care about each other.”
He had heard about it mostly from Campbell, a close friend. But seeing it was an eye-opener.
“He would compare it to our ’11 team with how close the guys were and how they interacted with each other and joked around, but then also worked really hard,” Marchand said. “That’s what I love about it -- when you have a team that works really hard, it allows you to have way more fun because you know everyone’s doing their job.”
Including him.
“It’s been fun to watch,” Maurice said. “They’ve been good from the minute they got together. What we had hoped is that, especially with Brad’s style, that we get these two younger players, especially Anton, thinking about the game a different way than just the solid kind of shutdown game.
“He’s learned to play the game the right way. So, it’s the perfect complement for those two young men that have killed penalties before with us, they have a defensive background. But we’re always kind of wondering, how much offense do they have? Is there more there?”
There was. Marchand helped unlock it.
Luostarinen, 26, is one point behind Marchand, with 13 (four goals, nine assists); Lundell, 23, has 12 points (five goals, seven assists).
“He’s been incredible,” Tkachuk said of Marchand earlier this postseason. “Him and their whole line has been incredible. … It’s crazy. He’s the oldest guy [on the team]. He’s full of energy and you would not think that by the way he’s playing right now.
“Super impressed to see what he’s doing, super lucky to have him on our side.”
Marchand thinks about the future “every now and again,” as he put it.
But he tries to bring himself back to this moment, to what is happening here with the Panthers. There will be time for that after the Cup is awarded and free agency looms.
“It’s going to come very fast and decisions are going to have to be made very quickly, but you don’t know what those decisions are yet, so you really can’t -- there’s not a whole lot to think about,” he said. “It’s just, theoretically, ‘Here’s what could happen.’”
Asked if the door is closed back in Boston, the place where Marchand and his family will live after his career eventually ends, he said, softly, “I have no idea.”
He doesn’t want to look past now, past the fun he is having and the chance ahead.
“I don’t think going into last summer I ever expected to be on a different team, to be going into the Finals with the Florida Panthers, but everything happens for a reason,” Marchand said. “Every time one door shuts another one opens, and you’ve just got to take advantage of each opportunity.
“I think that’s one of the things that I took away from this year, is that you have to really be grateful for each day. I never thought the last game that I played was going to be in Pittsburgh in February with the Bruins.”
There is still a bit of hurt in his voice as he recounts what happened, even as he takes joy in where he is now.
He is devastated. He is grateful. He is confused. He is hungry.
His future beyond the next seven games is opaque, where once he believed it was so clear.
But for now, Marchand is savoring these days, knowing how rarely they come and how precious they are. Four more wins and he will be a Stanley Cup champion again.
“I try to keep it all in perspective, how fortunate we are to be in it and to have this opportunity to chase a Cup,” he said. “I think it just hits me more knowing it’ll be over sooner rather than later.”
Marchand fortunate for ‘great fit,’ Stanley Cup pursuit with Panthers | NHL.com
37-year-old forward 4 wins from 2nd championship in 16th season after trade from Bruins
www.nhl.com
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Brad Marchand has nowhere to be.
He is sitting, feet up, curled into a locker in an empty Florida Panthers dressing room FaceTiming with his youngest, Rue, four days before Game 1 of his fourth Stanley Cup Final.
Fourteen years have passed since his first, years in which he has transitioned from brash rookie forward to seasoned veteran, a player constantly on the edge of suspension to a captain in the NHL to a hired gun after 1,000 games with one team.
That 2011 Final seems like a lifetime ago, with Marchand and Dallas Stars forward Tyler Seguin the only two still playing. But somehow it is also the one that most closely aligns with where he is in his 16th season, entering the final round of the playoffs unencumbered, free of responsibility, stress or expectations.
He was 23 years old then, with all the bravado and naivety in the world, an entire career ahead of him. Now he’s 37, most of his playing days behind him, treating this Final as potentially his last.
“I honestly feel less stressed now going into this Final than I did in the first round of the last five playoffs I was in,” Marchand said in a lengthy sit-down with NHL.com. “I’m just so excited for it. I’m not nervous about it at all. At the end of the day, however it plays out, it’s going to play out.
“Statistically, it’ll most likely be my last one; hopefully it’s not, but that’s just how this game works. I’m just going to enjoy every second of it.”
His first Final came at the end of his rookie season with the Boston Bruins, a magical time in which he vaulted from a fourth-line role to the top-six place he would occupy alongside Patrice Bergeron for the next 12 seasons.
He would win the Cup that season in an epic seven-game series against the Vancouver Canucks.
He’s still chasing a second championship.
The Bruins would reach the Cup Final two more times in that era, losing in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and in seven to the St. Louis Blues in 2019. Marchand’s elation would be replaced with heartbreak, with the understanding of how lucky he had gotten, how hard it truly is.
He has another chance with the Panthers, who are set to face the Edmonton Oilers in the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. Game 1 of the best-of-7 series will take place at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
Marchand, who was acquired by the Panthers on March 7 prior to the Trade Deadline, has been a fit beyond what they could have anticipated, not just for his on-ice production or the way he has elevated a line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen, but for everything else.
“What I didn’t know (before he arrived) is what Gregory Campbell did, is his incredibly positive spirit,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said of its assistant general manager, who played with Marchand for five seasons in Boston. “Guys that are vocal and intense sometimes will get up and down your bench, screaming at your bench, they just get so wired in the game and he never does that. It’s always positive. It’s always stay in there, hang in there.
“So, we get these two, especially ‘Lundy,’ young guys playing (with someone) bordering on legendary status at this point and he’s pumping their tires and he’s just like, every day excited. It’s his personality that I didn’t know, but he’s moved into the Matthew Tkachuk hate them (realm) -- that’s a horrible word, but it’s close -- and then they get here and you go, ‘You’re the exact opposite person that I thought you were.’”
He's also a person who understands where he’s been in this game, how difficult it is to get here, and the dwindling time he has left.
Which is why he’s grabbing onto this run with both hands.
“I’ve been on the best regular-season team to ever put skates on, and we didn’t accomplish anything,” Marchand said, referring to the 2022-23 Bruins, who set the NHL record for wins (65) and points (135) before being stunned by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference First Round. “You never know. You can be a great team on paper and do extremely incredible things in the regular season, but so many things have to go right to make the Final, to make a long run. It’s so hard to predict with any team.
“I hope it’s not [my last]. But realistically I have a few years left. Hopefully I can have another run, but if not, hopefully can take advantage of this one.”
* * *
It has been a roller coaster of a season for Marchand, starting with the three surgeries he had last summer, the season without a new contract, the 4 Nations Face-Off win with Canada, the divorce from the only NHL team he’d known and which he captained, the relocation to South Florida, the time spent away from his family.
“It was a lot,” he said. “It was a lot of stress.”
Last summer, Marchand knew he would have to have surgery at some point. No time was optimal, with the procedures putting the 4 Nations or the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics at risk, not to mention his status without a contract beyond the 2024-25 season.
“It was a tough summer,” Marchand said. “There were tough choices.”
He went for it then, with repairs to his elbow for a torn tendon, his groin to address a sports hernia and his abdominal area, also for a sports hernia. He started the season having taken three months off, knowing he had to play catch-up, with his conditioning, strength and power behind.
Still, the pressure was on from the outside for that contract.
“Your stats aren’t where they are and you’re not making the plays you normally make,” he said. “Yes, you know that. But there’s still a lot of noise that comes with that. I felt like I was trying to do the right thing, to be part of the group. There’s still a lot of heat that can come with that when your numbers and your game’s not where it’s supposed to be, where people expect it to be.”
It was all new to him. And, as he put it, it was something he “didn’t handle as good as I would have liked to.”
It still bothers him. Nothing more so than the contract situation.
“I didn’t really expect to have the contract negotiations that I had,” he said. “I thought that was going to go a lot different, which obviously I think impacted me mentally this year a lot. And I was frustrated by it. I never pictured even entering the season without a contract.”
He never pictured any of it.
“I didn’t really want to play contract years out because I never really wanted to have that stress. I always wanted the security of maybe take a little less and you get a deal done early and you have the security of it being done and you can just worry about playing hockey,” he said.
“I find when you go into a season playing (without a contract), things matter. Your stats matter more. So, it doesn’t just become about the team. When you’re on term and you’re on a contract, it can be all about the team and you can sacrifice whatever you need to to be part of the team. But in contract years, you can’t do that. You have to be a little bit selfish.”
It’s a weight, a different -- and, for Marchand, unwelcome -- lens through which to view his play amidst the play of the team he desperately wanted to succeed.
“You want to play through injuries, but you play through an injury and you’re not playing well and it affects contracts,” he said. “So, you’re trying to do all the right things, but it’s not always that easy.”
And had the season gone differently for the Bruins as a whole, Marchand believes he would likely would have remained in Boston. But after he didn’t sign at the start of free agency last season, after the contract negotiations with goalie Jeremy Swaymantook up most of the oxygen all summer, after the Bruins started slowly and fired coach Jim Montgomery in November, after injuries and underperformance spiraled, after the Bruins decided to sell, his fate was sealed.
Boston traded most of its assets, including its captain. Marchand did not have the power and/or force a trade to Florida, just an eight-team no-trade list. But the Panthers were the team that Marchand thought had the best chance to compete for the Cup.
He was right.
By the time Marchand is saying all this, as morning becomes afternoon at the Panthers’ practice facility, most of his teammates have vacated the premises. Many of them have families, kids, people to spend time with during the brief interregnum between the conference final and the start of the Cup Final.
Marchand doesn’t.
As a Trade Deadline acquisition, he is just here to play hockey. He has no outside responsibilities these days, a rarity for a man with three kids and a wife and a house and all that entails.
“My family’s not here, so literally the only thing I have to do here is to focus on hockey and to recover and to rest and to get my mind prepared for games,” he said. “And then, when I’m at the rink, the only thing I have to do is focus on me. I don’t have to try to manage everything else and worry about a whole team. I just worry about what I have to do to put my best game on the ice.”
It’s not what he’s used to at home, not with a teenager, an almost-8-year-old and a 3-year-old. When they’re up at night, outside of playoffs, he’s up and helping. When they’re up in the morning, so is he.
Here, he can sleep as much as he wants, bed at 10 p.m., wake up at 10 a.m. Naps, whenever.
It has been a boon for someone trying to make the most of the opportunity.
He will take the rest and the focus and the FaceTimes, will push all his energy into achieving what they all want, what he could sense they were headed toward even as an opponent earlier this season, and especially when he arrived in Florida. Marchand was acquired for a conditional NHL Draft pick that became a 2027 or 2028 first-round selection when Florida reached the conference final with Marchand playing at least 50 percent of its playoff games.
Marchand has been impressed by how the Panthers do things, the way they train and interact, the lack of cliques, the commitment and focus. It reminds him of his early days with the Bruins, but with a training staff beyond anything he’s seen.
“People undervalue how much that impacts a run,” Marchand said of how a team interacts off the ice. “There’s a reason that you hear that about every team that wins, like ‘Our group is so great.’ You want everyone to buy in, sacrifice, and be part of something, you need to have really good people on the same page, that care about each other.”
He had heard about it mostly from Campbell, a close friend. But seeing it was an eye-opener.
“He would compare it to our ’11 team with how close the guys were and how they interacted with each other and joked around, but then also worked really hard,” Marchand said. “That’s what I love about it -- when you have a team that works really hard, it allows you to have way more fun because you know everyone’s doing their job.”
Including him.
“It’s been fun to watch,” Maurice said. “They’ve been good from the minute they got together. What we had hoped is that, especially with Brad’s style, that we get these two younger players, especially Anton, thinking about the game a different way than just the solid kind of shutdown game.
“He’s learned to play the game the right way. So, it’s the perfect complement for those two young men that have killed penalties before with us, they have a defensive background. But we’re always kind of wondering, how much offense do they have? Is there more there?”
There was. Marchand helped unlock it.
Luostarinen, 26, is one point behind Marchand, with 13 (four goals, nine assists); Lundell, 23, has 12 points (five goals, seven assists).
“He’s been incredible,” Tkachuk said of Marchand earlier this postseason. “Him and their whole line has been incredible. … It’s crazy. He’s the oldest guy [on the team]. He’s full of energy and you would not think that by the way he’s playing right now.
“Super impressed to see what he’s doing, super lucky to have him on our side.”
Marchand thinks about the future “every now and again,” as he put it.
But he tries to bring himself back to this moment, to what is happening here with the Panthers. There will be time for that after the Cup is awarded and free agency looms.
“It’s going to come very fast and decisions are going to have to be made very quickly, but you don’t know what those decisions are yet, so you really can’t -- there’s not a whole lot to think about,” he said. “It’s just, theoretically, ‘Here’s what could happen.’”
Asked if the door is closed back in Boston, the place where Marchand and his family will live after his career eventually ends, he said, softly, “I have no idea.”
He doesn’t want to look past now, past the fun he is having and the chance ahead.
“I don’t think going into last summer I ever expected to be on a different team, to be going into the Finals with the Florida Panthers, but everything happens for a reason,” Marchand said. “Every time one door shuts another one opens, and you’ve just got to take advantage of each opportunity.
“I think that’s one of the things that I took away from this year, is that you have to really be grateful for each day. I never thought the last game that I played was going to be in Pittsburgh in February with the Bruins.”
There is still a bit of hurt in his voice as he recounts what happened, even as he takes joy in where he is now.
He is devastated. He is grateful. He is confused. He is hungry.
His future beyond the next seven games is opaque, where once he believed it was so clear.
But for now, Marchand is savoring these days, knowing how rarely they come and how precious they are. Four more wins and he will be a Stanley Cup champion again.
“I try to keep it all in perspective, how fortunate we are to be in it and to have this opportunity to chase a Cup,” he said. “I think it just hits me more knowing it’ll be over sooner rather than later.”
'As wired at breakfast as he is at game time': What Brad Marchand has brought to the Panthers
The former Bruin is relishing a long playoff run with the Panthers, and "living in the moment."
SUNRISE, Fla. -- Brad Marchand has regrets.
He didn't want to leave the Boston Bruins, the team that drafted him in 2006, won a Stanley Cup with him in 2011 and that he captained for the past two seasons after Patrice Bergeron retired. The team with whom he gained fame with 976 points in 1,090 games, as well as infamy as one of the NHL's most accomplished agitators. He dreamed about being a one-team guy, one of the rarest accomplishments for veteran stars in a transient sport.
Marchand regrets not being able to say goodbye to Boston fans on his own terms before the NHL trade deadline.
"I got hurt before I got traded. The last game I'll ever play in a Bruins jersey was not the last game I thought I was ever going to play in a Bruins jersey," he said.
Marchand's final home game in Boston was a loss to the New York Islanders on Feb. 27. His final game with the Bruins was March 3 in Pittsburgh. He was traded to the Florida Panthers on March 7, the result of a contract impasse with Boston management and the team's pivot to a retool.
He fought back tears in his first public appearance as a Panther. "At the end of the day, I know the business is the business and everybody has a shelf life," he said. "I am grateful, beyond words, for everything that organization has done for me."
Marchand regrets not appreciating all the experiences he had in Boston.
"When you come to the rink, it can be stressful. You start overthinking things. There's this pressure you sometimes put on yourself. You start stressing about things that you don't need to stress about," he said. "I know that there are moments that I missed out on or didn't really appreciate because I was stressing about other things."
For example, the Bruins had 135 points in 2022-23, becoming the most successful regular-season team in NHL history. The Panthers shocked the league -- and began their nascent dynasty -- with a seven-game upset in the first round of the playoffs that ended the series at a funeral-pitched TD Garden.
"We thought we were going to go to the finals that year. We thought we were going to win it all, and then we got pushed out in the first round," Marchand said. "You start looking back at those moments and you realize you took all we did that season for granted because we were so worried about going to the finals. We weren't living in the moment."
Those are old regrets for the new Brad Marchand. The playoff disappointment, the breakup with the Bruins, the deadline trade ... they were all shocks to his system that reoriented his thinking.
"I'm just not going to do that to myself this time around," he said. "I'm coming to the rink every day just having fun and trying to live in the moment, not taking anything too seriously."
Marchand started to rethink his own mindfulness when he arrived in Florida.
"My family's not here and I have a lot more time to sit home and think and go over things in my head than I normally do," he said. "Being here, they talk about being in the moment. Just going day by day. About taking time to reflect on things and appreciate them."
And so Marchand decided he was just going to enjoy himself during this run with the Panthers, which finds them back in the Stanley Cup Final, seeking a second straight championship against the Edmonton Oilers, whom they defeated in Game 7 for the Cup last season.
"I'm literally just trying to have fun out there and have fun in here," he said, motioning to the dressing room.
"The Dairy Queen thing is a great example."
THE "DAIRY QUEEN THING" sprang from an interview between Marchand and Sportsnet rinkside reporter Kyle Bukauskas. He asked Marchand about a run to Dairy Queen that the Panthers made during the Eastern Conference finals games in Raleigh, and then introduced a clip of Marchand eating something with a spoon in between periods of Florida's Game 3 win. Bukauskas asked Marchand if he was "refueling with a Blizzard" in the locker room.
Marchand extolled the virtues of the chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard as "the best dessert in the world," and made a pitch to DQ PR for a lifetime supply of the frozen treats for that endorsement.
"We had a little fun on the off day. There was a DQ by the hotel. We popped over and enjoyed our night," Marchand explained.
This interview went viral, with many fans (and media) taking it as gospel that Marchand had been eating ice cream in between periods. His teammates were interviewed about it. Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice was asked about it during his news conferences.
Days later, Marchand was finally asked about eating ice cream in the locker room during a game.
"It wasn't a Blizzard," Marchand said, with a tone that rendered the accusation absurd. "I was not eating a Blizzard in the middle of a game."
Marchand explained that he was referencing the Panthers' trip to Dairy Queen during the Sportsnet interview. "I was referencing that. I was making a joke about our excursion a couple of nights before. Just kind of making a joke off of it and I think people took it seriously," he said.
After the interview went viral, Marchand said his phone blew up with messages from people saying they were inspired by him to go to Dairy Queen.
"I appreciate the support," he said. "I love a good Blizzard more than anybody, but it's not something I've had in the middle of the game."
For many, this was never really about whether Marchand was wolfing down ice cream in his dressing room stall. It was essentially a tribute to the mercurial nature of the star winger that he reasonably could have been the guy eating Dairy Queen between periods. There's something indelible about the most agitating player on the ice celebrating his wickedness with spoonfuls of cookie dough ice cream during intermission.
But it wasn't ice cream or cookie dough or peanut butter. Marchand eventually revealed he was caught consuming "something healthy" on camera.
"It was honey. I was having honey. It was a spoonful of honey."
Because he's sweet?
"Because I'm a bear," he responded.
Marchand said he has always had an affinity for honey.
"Actually, when I was growing up, I loved Winnie the Pooh. So I used to have a Winnie the Pooh [doll] and I used to feed the bear honey. So it was covered with honey and would get rock hard," he said. "I don't think [my parents] enjoyed cleaning up the mess. But I had fun."
Marchand paused for effect.
"It's what we do in Halifax. We feed teddy bears honey."
Everyone laughed.
IT'S STILL SURREAL to think about where Marchand started in his NHL career to where he has ended up.
When the Bruins won the Cup in 2011, Marchand was a brash 23-year-old winger whose burgeoning offensive game was secondary to his extracurricular activities on the ice. Like when he used Vancouver Canucks winger Daniel Sedin as a punching bag in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, delivering around six shots to his face without the on-ice officials stepping in.
When asked why he kept punching Sedin, Marchand responded, "Because I felt like it."
He was the guy who got a misspelled tattoo after the Bruins won the Cup.
"Let me clear something up. After we won, a bunch of us got tattoos here in the dressing room of the Garden. Mine originally was misspelled," he said in an ESPN player diary. "Instead of saying Stanley Cup Champions it said 'Stanley Cup Champians.' I don't even know how that happened."
(It was fixed before the next season.)
He was the player who was suspended six times by the NHL between 2011 and 2018 for illegal hits, and was given a six-game suspension as recently as 2022. He was a player known as much for his goading as his goal scoring.
But in 2025? Marchand was "an elder statesman" for Team Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off, according to coach Jon Cooper.
"Love him. I can't say enough great things about him, his energy and passion. He seems to find the fountain of youth any time he comes into one of these tournaments. He's one of the guys everybody turns to when everything's under fire," Cooper said. "The loudest guy on the bench, pumping everybody up, is Brad Marchand. For somebody that's been around as long as he has, he doesn't have to do that."
That energy is one of the things Maurice likes best about Marchand.
"He is such a unique guy. He's as wired at breakfast as he is at game time," he said.
Maurice remembered when GM Bill Zito told him that the Panthers would be acquiring Matthew Tkachuk in 2022 and not believing he'd be able to pull it off. He had a similar reaction when Zito told him last summer that Chicago defenseman Seth Jones might be available. When Zito told him about Marchand, he knew it was real. "If he says it, then it could happen," Maurice said.
Truth be told, Maurice didn't believe the Panthers had "a huge hole" in their lineup for Marchand to fill. He was also concerned about how the 37-year-old would fit on a roster that was largely the same as the one that captured the Stanley Cup last season.
Two of Marchand's former Bruins teammates are Panthers executives: Shawn Thornton, chief revenue officer, and Gregory Campbell, assistant general manager. They assured Maurice that Marchand would be an ideal Panther.
"There's just many stories about bringing them high-end guys toward the end of their career and it doesn't work and it doesn't fit. But they were sure," the coach recalled.
When Marchand arrived with the Panthers, Maurice soon understood the fit -- on the ice and off the ice.
"His personality took some pressure off the rest of the guys. I actually have more quiet guys than we have loud guys. You all know that [Aleksander] Barkov is not doing a podcast when he's done [playing]," Maurice said. "They're like, 'OK, Marchy's here, he can do all the talking and we can just relax.'"
The Panthers had some talkers last season in forward Ryan Lomberg and defenseman Brandon Montour, who both left via free agency.
"Some of these guys start talking in their car and don't stop until they left the rink. They just go on all the time," Maurice said. "It was nice to have that element again that we kind of lost a little bit of it. He's brought it back."
Marchand has also learned through years when to hold his tongue with the media. Like when Carolina defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere intentionally shot the puck at Marchand in Game 1 of the conference finals, which led to Marchand getting a misconduct penalty. When Marchand was asked about his thoughts, he replied: "Yeah, I'm not much of a thinker."
Maurice nodded to that moment in his news conference later that day.
"He's a great interview. He's very, very bright, even though I hear he is a man of very few thoughts," he said, drawing laughs. "That's a good line. I'm stealing it."
ON THE ICE, Marchand has been primarily paired with center Anton Lundell, 23, and winger Eetu Luostarinen, 26, during the Panthers' run to the Final, forming one of the most effective lines in the postseason. In 17 games together, the line has had 55% of the shot attempts when on the ice, 56% of the expected goals, has 4.2 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 and just 0.82 goals against per 60 minutes.
Maurice raved about what Marchand "has done with those two young players" on Florida's third line. "The way they've expanded, the way they play ... part of it is playing off him," he said.
Marchand has 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) in the playoffs. Luostarinen has 13 points (four goals, nine assists) while Lundell has 12 points (five goals, seven assists).
Marchand had high praise for Luostarinen.
"He plays a man's game. He plays through bodies. He's hard on pucks, wins a lot of battles," Marchand said. "He's very, very skilled. He's great with the puck. He doesn't force plays. He's very smart in the way that he plays."
Marchand then bestowed the greatest accolade he could muster onto Luostarinen: He reminds Marchand of Bergeron, his six-time Selke Trophy-winning teammate with the Bruins.
"He's so defensively good with the stick. It reminds me a lot of Bergy, where he leads with the stick a lot, kills a lot of plays that way and creates offense from that," Marchand said.
Marchand said he enjoys playing with his Panthers linemates because they have similar "simple, direct" games.
"We just complement each other all over the ice because we read the game pretty well on both sides of it. We support each other pretty well, all the way up and down the ice and then in the corner," he said. "So I think we just because of that, we're able to create offense out, little scrums, stuff like that."
He said skating with Lundell and Luostarinen has been revitalizing.
"They play fast and they play hard and they're young, energetic guys. It keeps me feeling young," Marchand said. "I'm lying to myself. I feel 25 again. I feel rejuvenated and part of that comes to playing with some younger guys and part of a really good group of guys in here."
Marchand didn't always feel they were good guys. Not when Matthew Tkachuk was terrorizing his Bruins in the playoffs in 2023 and 2024.
"He's a competitor. He's there to win. His reputation proceeds him," Marchand said of Tkachuk. "One of the most gifted players in the league around the net. He brings an element to the group that brings guys swagger."
Someone asked what opponents think about having Marchand and Tkachuk -- two legendary provocateurs -- on the ice for Florida.
"I mostly feel sorry for the guys in our room. Not too many guys are going to get a break here now," Marchand said of him and Tkachuk. "It's nice to be on his team rather than going against him, for sure."
Then there's Sam Bennett, who appeared to sucker punch Marchand during the Panthers' playoff series win over the Bruins in 2024. It knocked Marchand out of the series for two games and didn't result in further discipline for Bennett. At the trade deadline in 2025, they became teammates.
"I didn't hold a grudge. Again, I know how this game's played. I played a similar way," Marchand said. "It's something that we joke about. I can laugh it off. I joke about it all the time. I joke about it more than he does, but I definitely joke about it."
Maurice said there's a reason that hockey players who were the fiercest rivals can become teammates without much acrimony.
"I think you find out when a player walks in the room, even if he's had his great battles, they're so happy that it's over. They don't have to fight you anymore. They don't have to hack and whack in the corner for 60 minutes," Maurice said. "Brad Marchand and Sam Bennett are best friends now. A year ago, you would've never thought that could happen."
Once bitter rivals, Marchand and Bennett are now pulling the rope together as Panthers teammates. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
A year ago, Brad Marchand becoming a Florida Panther wasn't something many believed could happen, although it makes perfect sense now: The Rat King, joining the franchise that celebrates wins by throwing plastic rats on the ice.
In fact, Marchand has become a new part of that tradition. After Florida wins, if there are rats on the ice, his teammates have taken to shooting the faux rodents at Marchand as they're leaving for the dressing room.
"They see my family on the ice and want us to be together," Marchand deadpanned.
As the playoffs have progressed, "they're shooting to hurt now," according to Marchand. "Matthew Tkachuk caught me with one last game that I actually really felt there," he said.
Marchand is feeling a lot these days. The sting of the trade dissipates a little more with every playoff win. He's having more fun and stressing less, among teammates with whom he has quickly bonded. And he's a few wins from another Stanley Cup, in the third Final he has reached since winning his first ring 14 years ago.
"It's exciting. You hope that you get to this point. Obviously, we have a great team and we played well so far. We got to the point where we want to be, but we haven't accomplished anything yet," Marchand said.
"I may never get back this late in the playoffs ever again in my career. These are memories and moments that you want to embrace."
StrangeVision
"...currently clean on OPSEC."
- Apr 1, 2007
- 25,197
- 13,957
Panteras
Elbo Room Bullies
Shouldn’t he be driving a Corolla or something?
Ratsreign
Registered User
- Mar 12, 2018
- 3,905
- 9,267
Ratsreign
Registered User
- Mar 12, 2018
- 3,905
- 9,267
Sure beats being out of it by Thanksgiving !
Let the hate flow, bitches!!!!
Ratsreign
Registered User
- Mar 12, 2018
- 3,905
- 9,267
I’ll never forget the day I was going to visit a friend in Coral Springs and had to stop and wait for some kids to drag their net out of the street. When I first moved here as a youngster I had new friends who would see me shooting tennis balls at the garage door asking me “what kind of club is that?” We’ve come a long way. Suck it haters!NHL teams thrive in non-traditional markets, from Texas to Florida | TSN
Popeye Jones was an NBA rookie with the Mavericks the same season that Dallas debuted its new NHL team, and he decided to go to a Stars game after meeting future Hall of Fame player Mike Modano.
Popeye Jones was an NBA rookie with the Mavericks the same season that Dallas debuted its new NHL team, and he decided to go to a Stars game after meeting future Hall of Fame player Mike Modano.
“I couldn’t figure out hockey. They were jumping over and off the ice … I’m like, 'what’s going on with this sport?'" Jones said. “The puck flew up, I remember it hit somebody in the nose, blood was all over the ice and they kept playing.”
Back during that 1993-94 season, before he became a hockey dad, the 6-foot-8 Tennessee native who had grown up playing basketball, football and baseball was like many people in the South: He knew nothing about hockey even as the NHL was making a push into non-traditional markets.
Those days are long gone. NHL teams in the South are playing for and winning the Stanley Cup in packed arenas and there is steady growth when it comes to youth participation. Football may still be king in many Sun Belt locales, but hockey has been welcomed from Las Vegas to Texas to Nashville to North Carolina — and certainly in Florida.
Jones has two sons who are now NHL players. Seth Jones, a defenseman for the Florida Panthers, is playing in the Stanley Cup Final after the 12-season veteran, the fourth overall pick by Nashville in the 2013 draft, was traded from Chicago to the defending champions in March. Caleb Jones played for the Los Angeles Kings, his fourth team the past seven years.
The expansion Panthers came into the league with Anaheim in 1993-94, at the same time the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas. The Tampa Bay Lightning and Ottawa Senators were expansion teams the previous season, and the Hartford Whalers moved to Carolina and became the Hurricanes in 1997.
Shane Willis remembers playing with the Hurricanes following the NHL's arrival in North Carolina — a process featuring a two-year transition to Greensboro before moving to Raleigh — and sometimes noticing a sparse home crowd during warmups.
“I’m like, ‘Is anybody coming?’” said Willis, now Carolina’s manager of youth and amateur hockey after five seasons as an NHL player.
That isn’t the case now, with Carolina having won a Stanley Cup in 2006 and currently on a seven-year run of winning at least one postseason series, including this year's run to the East final.
Southern success
This is the sixth season in a row a team from Florida has reached the Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are there for the third year in a row, this time in a rematch against Edmonton. Tampa Bay also made it to the final three straight seasons, winning the Cup the first two.
The Lightning's run began by beating Dallas in 2020 in what is still the the “southernmost” Stanley Cup Final — except that entire postseason was played in Canada after the regular season was shortened because of the pandemic.
Dallas made its third West final in a row this year, coming up short of another Cup chance. But they were the first Sun Belt team to hoist the Stanley Cup in 1999, followed by Tampa Bay in 2004.
Every game in the conference finals in 2023 was played in the Sun Belt, a first. The Panthers beat Carolina in the East like they did this year, and Dallas lost to Vegas in the West.
Popeye, Mo and Sakic
Popeye Jones met Modano after getting invited to do an appearance during a Dallas Cowboys game.
“Not being a hockey fan, I really didn’t know who he was and he didn’t who I was. But we just struck up a conversation and started talking,” Jones said. “Just general talk about sports and whatever, and he was such a nice guy and I enjoyed sitting there and talking to him.”
That helped Jones become a Stars fan. They both played home games at the since-demolished Reunion Arena before Jones was traded to Toronto and later Boston, homes of two of the NHL's Original Six teams. His only season playing in Denver was 1999-2000, when the Avalanche lost to the Stars in consecutive West finals before winning the Cup in 2001. It was there that he got to know Avs star Joe Sakic, another future Hall of Fame hockey player and now the team's president of hockey operations.
Jones’ oldest son, Justin, came home from school one day in the Denver area and said he wanted to play hockey, which had a significant influence on Seth, who was 5 or 6 at the time. With his sons interested in playing an unfamiliar sport , Jones sought advice from Sakic, who said the boys needed to take skating lessons.
Seth Jones started playing hockey in Colorado, but was born in Texas and was on some Stars-affiliated youth teams after his dad later returned to the Mavericks.
“When I was there, you could see more and more kids starting to play in Texas,” the 30-year-old Panthers defenseman said. “And then really the past eight to 10 years, you see kids actually moving from the northern cities down to Texas because the hockey has really grown. Where before, all the good kids out of the southern cities would move up north to Chicago and Michigan and New York and these places.”
More and more players
The number of players registered with USA Hockey has grown significantly in Southern states over the past 20 seasons.
USA Hockey said 4,793 players registered in North Carolina for the 2005-06 season, with roughly 2,400 of those being 18 or younger. That overall number of players jumped 19.5% (to 5,728) for the season following their 2006 Cup run.
By the 2024-25 season, the state had 8,698 players (up 81.5% from 2005-06) with 5,608 being 18 or younger (up 135.5%), though Willis noted the actual number is likely higher since not all players register with USA Hockey.
The total number of registrations have increased even more in Florida and Texas over the past two decades.
In Florida, the total number of players has gone from 9,363 in 2005-06 to 22,888 (a 144.5% increase), with the number in the 18 or younger age groups nearly doubling to 10,277. Texas went from 7,017 to 17,346 total registrations (147.2%) in that same span, with those 18 and under going from 5,457 to 7,199 (31.9%).
Pete DeBoer, the Stars coach the past three seasons, had his first NHL head coaching job with Florida from 2008-11. He recalls the Lightning and Panthers then playing before sparse crowds with questions about whether those teams would even stay in those markets.
“To see where they’re at now is really impressive,” DeBoer said before the team fired him this past week. “Dallas for me is a perfect example of coming into a place and, you know, getting a foothold at the grassroots level, and that the amount of rinks, ice surfaces and facilities and kids playing minor hockey here in Dallas is way bigger than I ever anticipated.”
Much of that came as a result of the 1999 Stanley Cup for the Stars.
“They won, they captured the city’s attention and all this stuff got done. Rinks got built,” DeBoer said. “I think Florida didn’t get that done early, but is doing it now and they’re going to reap the benefits of that. I think when you get a team that wins and it’s in a non-traditional market, I think the benefits roll out for decades.”
Introducing the game
For the Hurricanes, early outreach included going to area schools and essentially running PE classes as an introduction to the sport. The team, aided by grant money from the NHL, has more recently purchased equipment such as balls, sticks and Hurricanes-logo apparel to donate to more than 100 schools. The team this year partnered with Raleigh suburb Apex to open two public street hockey rinks.
Carolina, Dallas and Florida all have tie-ins to to the “Learn to Play” umbrella program created by the NHL and NHL Players’ Association to introduce boys and girls, and even adults, to the sport. Those programs include variations of providing hockey equipment and instruction, and on-ice workouts at multiple rinks in their areas.
"What you have to do is not only introduce the game of hockey to people, you have to introduce your brand. You have to make both things very attractive to parents to want to get involved,” Willis said. “I see so many parents now, they come to games and we talk about it: if you can create a hockey player, whether it’s street hockey or ice hockey, you’re creating three fans. Because that kid is going to come to a game with Dad, Dad and Mom, maybe a sibling. So then you’re in the range of three to four fans you’re creating.”
Popeye Jones knows how that can go, recalling a time when Seth Jones was 11 or 12 and the family wanted him to find something else to do in the summertime.
“A kid called and said hey they had some ice, you want to come and, you know, play some pickup hockey. At first I didn’t want him to, but I saw he was moping around the house,” the elder Jones said. “I told him to get his stuff. I’ll never forget it, he got this bag together so fast and got in that car and I was driving him to the rink and I looked at him and I saw this big grin and I said, ‘Well, I guess I got a hockey player.’”
batting1k
Registered User
- Mar 3, 2013
- 20,617
- 31,207
I think next season you will see Maurice use the same tactics, maybe even earlier, where he will sit players for extended time, to have them nursed and fresh for the playoffs. We have our President Cup and division banners, these players don’t care about them. They play only for the Cup.
behemolari
Registered User
- Dec 1, 2011
- 6,572
- 3,821
I cant wait all that is gone and we can actually see two hockey games
Felidae
Registered User
- Sep 30, 2016
- 10,312
- 19,945
Maybe not but he redeemed himself in game 2 with some excellent defensive plays in crucial moments.
behemolari
Registered User
- Dec 1, 2011
- 6,572
- 3,821
Maurice saying wait Bennett to ask Marchand questions was goldBennett looking around wondering why he's up there as everyone keeps asking Marchand questions.
Last edited:
Gentle Man
09/12
The sweeping poke check from Kane going under his foot without tripping him was absolute sorcery
