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The Florida Panthers are An Analytics Team. Just ask them, they'll tell you. This means that dorks on the internet are rooting for their success to finally stick it to...well, I don't know, because every team employs advanced analytics now, but they'll stick it to the idea of, as Senor Columnist put it, general managers buried under piles of empty Labatt cans.
The Wall Street wizards running the Panthers took last year's Atlantic Division champions and turned them into a D+ team, about to miss the playoffs for the 14th time in 16 years. How'd they build this winner? Well, first of all, the Atlantic doesn't suck nearly as much as it did last year, now that Toronto got out of its mini-tank, Montreal got Price back, and Ottawa randomly decided to be good. The strength of the 2016 Panthers was in defense, goaltending, and coaching: you had a crackerjack blue line led by 1OA Aaron Ekblad and veteran Brian Campbell, plus lesser players who nonetheless jelled through time, system, and a respected coach in Gerard Gallant who got the most out of his guys. Plus, behind them, they had Roberto Luongo turning in a great season for his or any age at 2.35/.922.
So if you're one of these West Point grads who made a fortune in the ethically and legally dubious field of high-frequency trading, what do you do? Fuck with the defense, goaltending, and coaching! I'll forgive them the loss of Brian Campbell, because that was a family decision. They let their captain Willie Mitchell walk because he was old, instead of putting him on the Michal Rozsival plan. They traded Erik Gudbranson, a big dumb oaf but occasionally effective oaf, to Vancouver, and Russian project Dmitri Kulikov to Buffalo. In their places came guys The Analytics said would be improvements: the respectable but forgettable Jason Demers, Mark Pysyk in the Kulikov trade, but most of all Keith Yandle, a great offensive defenseman who also gets undressed more frequently than a whore at an airport motel. So now you've more or less turned over the entire defensive unit except for Ekblad and the results have been about what you'd expect. James Reimer and Luongo are platooning in goal and when you have two starting goalies, you have zero.
But the best part is the way they fired Gerard Gallant. They didn't want a crusty old redass (Gallant was on those Wings teams before the Russian Five but after the Dead Things) who wouldn't buy into their analytic approach, so they fired him while he was around .500 and made him get a taxi back to the team hotel because the bus left without him. So they put in Tom Rowe, who was the general manager they put in to replace Dale Tallon for, again, being a crusty old redass who wouldn't buy into their analytic approach! Rowe appears to be a blithering idiot with no respect from his players because they play with no structure. Their top forwards are always getting hurt, Nick Bjugstad went from poor man's Toews to damn near out of the league, but hey, Jonathan Marchessault has put up 45 points on $750,000! The analytics worked!
This is another bullshit team that's only staying where it's playing because Broward County gave them a HUGE taxpayer bailout to the tune of $86,000,000 to stay for another seven years. I guess $12.2MM/yr in subsidies is still better than the $25MM/yr Phoenix got, but it's still too high because it's not zero. They have five years to go on that deal and if these Army guys don't get more free money they'll probably be gone just like Panthers owner after Panthers owner who couldn't make the NHL work in suburban Fort Lauderdale where there's never been a base for a local team, just pockets of tourists and retirees from someplace else.
The Hawks should really try to win this game, especially if Minnesota drops their day game to Vancouver, and then peace out on the Bolts game Sunday so that everyone can enjoy the rest of the Florida vacation.
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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