These Panthers skated right into our hearts | Editorial

They did it!

The Florida Panthers clinched the National Hockey League title in dramatic fashion on Monday night, defeating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 before a packed house of 19,000 fans at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.

It was historic. It was magical. And was it ever nerve-wracking. To the end, these Cats kept things interesting as they skated themselves right into our hearts.

After beating the Oilers three straight times, they proceeded to drop the next three, one of them by the outlandish score of 8-1 — a result that sounded more like baseball than hockey.

What might have been

Those three defeats led to many sweaty palms, because it raised the possibility of what would have been an epic collapse.

Only one team in NHL history, the 1942 Detroit Red Wings, endured the worst humiliation imaginable in a seven-game championship series, the dreaded “reverse sweep” of four straight losses after three straight wins.

But these gritty, close-knit, defense-minded Panthers met the moment, as champions do. That made winning the Stanley Cup all the more satisfying.

“We believed. That was never a problem,” team captain Aleksander Barkov said in a morning-after column by the Sun Sentinel’s Dave Hyde.

The sight of an exultant Barkov hoisting the most iconic piece of hardware in sports, jubilantly skating around the arena, should become instantly iconic, like the image of Don Shula being carried off the field by his victorious Dolphins.

Broward’s champions

All hail Broward County, the unlikely home of hockey’s elite, joining the champion Dolphins (Super Bowls in 1973 and 1974), Heat (2006, 2012, and 2013), and Marlins (1997 and 2003).

It’s a glorious moment for all South Florida sports fans, and it’s fitting to reflect on how this place came to be home to hockey-crazed fans, because, let’s face it, ever since Joe Robbie arrived in Miami, it’s been a football-first town (in a football-first state).

The NHL awarded Blockbuster Video founder H. Wayne Huizenga an expansion franchise (along with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks) and play began in the old Miami Arena in the 1993-94 season.

But why, some people still ask, is that big hockey arena out next to the Everglades, anyway?

In Sunrise? Really?

The answer is that Huizenga wanted it there, because it could be built a lot faster and a lot cheaper (and by Broward County, which still owns it).

Huizenga, a long-time Fort Lauderdale resident, preferred Sunrise over a site near downtown Fort Lauderdale at Broward Boulevard, west of I-95.

Sunrise was a controversial choice at the time. Despite the popularity of Sawgrass Mills and the Sawgrass Expressway, it was still seen as an outpost.

East-side hoteliers, whose guests’ tourist taxes helped pay for the arena, were appalled by the decision, and Fort Lauderdale officials explored how to block construction.

But it was obvious by the mid-1990s that the region’s population center had shifted far to the west. In those years after I-595 was built, Pembroke Pines was booming and Weston was a shiny new city.

The arena really did put Sunrise on the sports map, even though it was clumsily called the National Car Rental Center, which sounded like a drop-off location for Oldsmobiles. (Huizenga owned the rental car company, too.)

But wire service stories from home games began carrying the all-caps dateline “SUNRISE, Fla.,” and now it’s becoming synonymous —  or should be — with much older, bigger, better-known hockey towns like Detroit, Montreal and St. Louis.

South Florida’s first sports crown in more than a decade is especially sweet redemption for the Panthers, who lost the Cup finals to the Vegas Golden Knights a year ago. It’s a crowning achievement for their popular coach Paul Maurice, a hockey lifer who was the last coach of the long-gone Hartford Whalers.

Winning changes everything. A hockey culture will now take hold in the most incongruous of places with a love for a game played on ice, indoors, in the sweltering heat of Broward suburbia.

Cause for celebration

Part of the joy of a hometown team’s ultimate triumph is the way it brings a region together to celebrate something.

Now it’s on to the victory parade at 11 a.m. Sunday on Fort Lauderdale beach, which is fitting as the area’s most iconic scenery.

Come one, come all — even fair-weather fans who boarded the team bandwagon recently, who still might not be sure what icing or a power play means.

“The team, from the start of training camp, had one goal, and that was to get back to the Stanley Cup final and finish the job. Mission accomplished!” said radio play-by-play man Doug Plagens. As the final horn blared, his broadcast partner Bill Lindsay, an original Panther player, was overcome with audible joy.

They really did it.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.