(Sunrise) There was a time when you could come to hockey around here for cheap, with free parking and also free hot dogs to go with the ridiculous ticket price, but those days are gone, obviously.
Arriving around the arena Friday morning, it was the price of parking, displayed in large letters, that stood out: $75. Next, how should I put it? This buzz, this atmosphere, this fervor that we were hardly used to finding here, not often anyway, in this field called Sunrise, a corner best known to Quebecers because of its immense shopping center planted with across the street, where people come to buy laundry at 50% off during the holidays while waiting for the Canadiens game in the evening.
The Panthers are not used to this much attention. From 2000-01 to 2018-19, they missed the playoffs 16 of 18 seasons, including a very long drought of 10 straight seasons without playing a single playoff game.
But Matthew Tkachuk doesn’t really remember all that, and anyway, he prefers to talk about what’s happening now.
This is not false. For a second year in a row, the Panthers find themselves in the Stanley Cup final, this time against the Edmonton Oilers, with game number one scheduled for Saturday evening.
“I went for a walk a few days ago, and then from Miami to West Palm Beach, everyone is talking to me about it,” the fiery forward enthused. “You can see that hockey here is constantly growing. If I can compare it with what I saw when I arrived in this league in 2016, I would say it’s night and day.”
Tkachuk, a member of the Panthers for only two seasons, obviously hasn’t had the down years around here. His colleague Aaron Ekblad was not so lucky; When he arrived here in 2014, the defender mostly experienced defeat, often, with teams missing the playoffs four times in his first five seasons with the club.
He too believes that things have changed under the palm trees.
“I would say there’s been a huge culture change with our team,” Ekblad said. We went through several coaches, also a few general managers, and now there is a solid foundation on which we can build. We don’t have to go through as many changes anymore, and I think that’s very good for the organization.
With the victory came the results, and the Panthers, who almost always played in a half-empty arena except for the Canadiens’ annual holiday visit, found themselves this season averaging 16,682 fans per game , the 13th-ranked NHL assist average in 2023-24. Attendance here has jumped 11.7% this season, the largest increase in attendance in the league.
All they need is a Stanley Cup, which they have never been able to obtain since their birth in 1993, a drought as long as the last Cup won by a Canadian club, moreover.
“It’s a terrible feeling to lose in the final like last year, and it’s not something you look for,” added Aaron Ekblad. But I would say we learned from last year. »
Around here, we also learned that parking and hot dogs will never be free again.