Florida Panthers

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The Florida Panthers is a professional ice hockey team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Hockey League (NHL) Eastern Region. The local broadcasting rights of the team have been held by Fox Sports Florida (formerly SportsChannel Florida) since 1996. The team originally played their home game at the Miami Arena, before moving to the B & T Center in 1998. Located in Sunrise, Florida, the Panthers are the southernmost team in the NHL.

The Panthers began playing in the 1993-94 NHL season. The team had made one appearance in the Stanley Cup Final, in 1996, the only season in which the Panthers ever won the playoff series, eventually losing the Final to Colorado Landslide. The team advanced to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second time in 12 years in 2012, but were eliminated in seven games in the Eastern Conference quarter-finals by the New Jersey Devils, who eventually won the Eastern Conference championship that season.

The club is affiliated with a small league team, Springfield Thunderbirds from the American Hockey League.

Video Florida Panthers

Histori

Awal tahun (1992-2000)

Blockbuster Video champion Wayne Huizenga was awarded the NHL franchise for Miami on December 10, 1992, the same day The Walt Disney Company earned the right to start a team in Anaheim that would become Mighty Ducks. At that time, Huizenga had a newly founded Florida Florida from Major League Baseball and part of the National Football League (NFL) at the Miami Dolphins. The entrance fee is $ 50 million, but although fellow Florida Tampa Bay Lightning team started playing the previous year, the NHL did not consider it a territorial infringement case. Huizenga announced the team will play at the Miami Arena, sharing the building with the Miami Heat, National Basketball Association, until the newly built arena. The office for the team was only established in June 1993, while vice president of business operations Dean Jordan acknowledged that "no business person, myself included, knows anything about hockey."

On April 20, 1993, a press conference at Ft. Lauderdale announced that the team would be named Florida Panthers, with former New York Islanders general manager Bill Torrey as president and Bobby Clarke as general manager. The team is named for Florida panther, a large endemic endemic cat species in the nearby Everglades region. After logos and uniforms were unveiled on June 15, the team also announced its financial commitment to the cause of panther conservation. Huizenga held the Panthers brand since 1991, when he bought it from a group of Tampa investors who are trying to create an MLB team in the Tampa Bay area.

The new franchise will join the NHL to participate in the 1993-94 season, along with Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. List of Panthers and Ducks filled in both the expansion draft and the 1993 NHL Entry Draft in June 1993, hosted by Quebec City; the draft produced ten players who would eventually become part of the 1996 Eastern Conference team.

The first big stars of the Panthers are New York Rangers forward John Vanbiesbrouck, rookie Rob Niedermayer and forward Scott Mellanby, who scored 30 goals in the inaugural Florida season. Their first match was a 4-4 tie on the road against the Chicago Blackhawks, while their first win was a 2-0 shutout from Tampa Bay Lightning at Thunderdome before then-NHL recording a crowd of 27,227. The Panthers had one of the most successful first seasons of any expansion team, finishing just two points below 0,500 and narrowly missing the 1994 playoff spot in the East. Their first year's success was mainly due to the "trap defense" run by first-year coach Roger Neilson. This conservative style was heavily criticized by the NHL team; some even suggested that the Panthers ruin the game at the time. While team executives expect the audience to be made up of mostly Canadian "snowbirds" living in Florida, the Floridians soon embrace the Panthers. Assisted by other Miami teams that have decent performances, the club averaged 94% in the 14,500-seat Miami Arena, and sold 8,500 season tickets in 100 days.

In August 1994, Clarke general manager went to work for the Philadelphia Flyers, while Bryan Murray was brought from Detroit Red Wings as his successor. After another close brush with the playoffs, finishing the 1994-95 season shortened again in 9th place, Neilson was fired following a debate with Murray on Ed Jovanovski, who selected Panthers as the number one choice overall on the 1994 NHL Sign In Draw. Doug MacLean, who has become director of team player development, promoted to coach. The team then acquired Ray Sheppard from the San Jose Sharks at the NHL trade deadline and looked into the playoffs for the first time.

The mouse trick and a trip to the Stanley Cup Final

A very unusual goal celebration was developed in Miami during the 1995-96 season. On the opening night of 1995-96 from the Panthers, a mouse ran across the team locker room. Scott Mellanby reacted with a "one-time" mouse to the wall, killing him. That night, he scored two goals, which Vanbiesbrouck quoted was "a mouse trick." Two nights later, when the story found its way into the world, some fans threw rubber mice to the ice to celebrate a goal. The number of rubber mice went from 16 for the third home game to over 2,000 during the playoffs.

In the 1996 playoff, as the fourth seed in the East, the Panthers faced the Boston Bruins in the first round and won in five games. Bill Lindsay's famous clinching-series goal is still a trademark image to run a remarkable third-year franchise. The Panthers went on to disrupt the Philadelphia Flyers top seed in six games followed by second-seeded Pittsburgh Penguins in seven (with Tom Fitzgerald scoring a goal that would end as a winning goal) to reach the Stanley Cup Final against Colorado Landslide, another team making its first Finals appearance. The Landslide, however, swept the Panthers in four straight games. For the surprise success of his team, Bryan Murray was honored as the NHL Executive of the Year.

The Panthers will start the next season with an unbeaten streak in 12 matches but faded in the second half of the season after swapping positions in second-placed Stu Barnes. They lost in the first round of playoffs to Wayne Gretzky led by New York Rangers in five games. The team will fall in the 1997-98 season. After the start of 7-12-4, Panthers sacked Doug MacLean, replacing him for the season with general manager Bryan Murray. However, the change did not help, as Florida recorded the worst 24-43-15 franchise record, including 15 games without a winning streak. This season will also mark the end of John Vanbiesbrouck's time in Florida; in the middle of that streak, he was shelled by the Chicago Blackhawks and never played another game for the Panthers. He will then sign with the off-season Flyers as a free agent.

The new arena and a new millennium (1998-2010)

The Panthers moved to the new National Car Rental Center (later Office Depot and BankAtlantic Center, now known as the BB & T Center) in 1998. In 1998-99, they acquired Pavel Bure ("Russian Rocket"), in a blockbuster. trade with Vancouver Canucks. They then reached the playoffs again in 1999-2000, losing in the first round to the Stanley Cup champion, the New Jersey Devils. The team slumped in 2000-01. After that, Huizenga sells Panthers to a group of ownership led by Alan Cohen. The next season, 2001-02, the Panthers have their worst record. Bure struggled despite being reunited with his brother Valeri, and was traded to Rangers at the 2002 trading deadline.

The Panthers then began eyeing defenseman Jay Bouwmeester, who was widely expected to be selected as a whole in the 2002 Draft. However, general manager Rick Dudley sent Florida's first pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets, who voted winger Rick Nash, and in return the Panthers received the right to trade the first round selection with Blue Jackets in the 2003 Draft, a right that was not implemented when the Panthers received the first overall selection in 2003 as well. The Atlanta Thrashers, having chosen Karihhen's second career goaltender overall, announced that the Panthers had given them two draft picks to ensure that Bouwmeester would still be available for Florida selection. Bouwmeester was voted third overall by the Panthers. Said head coach Mike Keenan then, "We should not do that... Jay will be number one if we keep picking it."

In 2003, the Panthers hosted the NHL All-Star Weekend in which the Western Conference triumphed 6-5 after the first match in All-Star history. The West overcame a four-goal blow by Thrashers winger Dany Heatley, who took home the MVP award in his first All-Star appearance.

On June 23, 2006, the Panthers again engaged in blockbuster trade with Vancouver, sending Roberto Luongo, Lukas Krajicek and six-round pick draft (Sergei Shirokov) in exchange for Todd Bertuzzi, Alex Auld and Bryan Allen. This trade has been considered by some to be one of the worst trades in the history of professional sports - Luongo, who is at the top of his career, is one of the League's top scorers, while Bertuzzi only plays a few games for Florida before injury.. He will then be traded to the Detroit Red Wings at the time limit of trading for Shawn Matthias. In addition, Auld ended up as a bad substitute for Luongo, and was finally released after a season with the team.

On June 22, 2007, the Panthers were involved in another draft deal day involving the goaltender. The team acquired Tomas Vokoun of Nashville Predators in exchange for three first-round pickup drafts in 2008, a second-round pick in 2008 and a second conditional pick pickup that could be used in 2007 or 2008. The move would eventually pay off when Vokoun was elected to East All-Star Team. On July 28, 2007, Florida launched their new shirts for more than 11,000 fans at the BankAtlantic Center during the first break of the 1996 Panthers' Reunion game. The front stars Nathan Horton and Stephen Weiss have complete teeth to help show off sweater changes.

In June 2008, the Panthers traded their captain Olli Jokinen to the Phoenix Coyote for a second-round pick and defensive design of Keith Ballard and Nick Boynton. The Panthers finished the 2008-09 season with a strong 41-30-11 record and 93 points, the second highest finish in franchise history. Nonetheless, however, the Panthers missed the playoffs for the eighth consecutive season, the longest streak in the NHL.

In November 2009, Cliff Viner and Stu Siegel became the owners of a new majority. On November 23, 2009, the Panthers made their third jersey, clearing red from an alternate jersey, replacing it with blue powder. The Panthers missed the playoffs for the ninth time in a row in the 2009-10 season, making them the first team in NHL history to do so in one city.