After decades of suffering, Florida Panthers fans are finally crying for a good reason

The clock ticked down in Monday’s Stanley Cup Final Game 7 and that feeling rose through Panthers’ fans chests, rising fastest in those who have suffered longest. That feeling that fills the head and overflows as tears, which fell at the prolonged horn blast signaling the Panthers’ 2-1 survival and triumph.

And, signaling the emotional payoff for staying invested in a team so often bankrupt on results more than 30 years.

Former Panthers booster club president Pompano Beach’s Dave Bierman, who attends every game with his wife, Valerie, began crying along with others in his section.

In another part of the arena, Panthers fan Carl Kanas, who nearly died in 2021, felt “30 years of mostly pent-up frustration and wanting were lifted. I survived a near-death aneurysm, in order, in some small part, to see this. My team that I root for with all my heart and soul had finally won the big one.”

Kanas and Bierman were season-ticket holders from Year 1. Bierman was from the first minute — he knew someone at the post office who postmarked his as 12:01 a.m. on the first day ticket orders could be mailed. Kanas bought his house in Plantation because what’s now called Amerant Bank Arena was being built 4 miles away, which he explained to his wife, Stacy Kanas, on their first date.

“‘Yeah, honey, I will be there at least 41 nights a year, hopefully up to 60 when you throw in some concerts,’” he said he told her. “’You can get on board the train or get out of the way.’ She married me anyway.”

From his couch in Jacksonville, where he switched Panthers jerseys each period of Game 7 so no jersey would bear the weight of superstition, Pinecrest-raised Dillon Hearns wept for 20 minutes.

Earlier in the series, Hearns said the Panthers on the verge of winning the Stanley Cup felt “very surreal.”

Monday, “when it was looking like the possibility of those last moments, it really did feel like disbelief,” Hearns said. “That’s the followup to that [surreal] feeling. It was a moment that I’d dreamed of and didn’t know when it was going to happen. To see it counting down second by second, it was disbelief in a positive, rewarding sense.”

Hearns’ collection of Panthers pucks, mini-jerseys, pins, jerseys, tickets, merchandise given away at games or special events could start a Panthers-centric sports memorabilia store. He loves the Panthers like a twin brother, which makes sense. They’re both born in 1993 and both unconditionally loved by Hearns’ father, who grew up in Miami Springs and embraced hockey while playing college soccer in Connecticut.

So, when discussing earlier in the series how he might feel when the Panthers won, Hearns said, “I wouldn’t know how to feel because its felt so out of reach my entire life.”

Perhaps nothing sums up the way Panthers fans can be wary of even the good as what happened on X the morning of Stanley Cup Final Game 4. The Panthers held a 3-0 series lead, a margin only blown four times in NHL history and only once in a Stanley Cup Final.

The X account Mellanby’s Dead Rat posted, “Good morning. I’ve been a Panther fan so long I’m actually worried we could still screw this up.”

Mellanby’s Dead Rat has 220 followers. The post received 515 likes, 50 retweets, 71 responses and was seen by 36,400 people.

Among the comments in quote postings: “Same. honestly;” “I feel seen...;” “Yup.”

(For those wondering about the account’s name: Panthers’ Scott Mellanby killed a rat before the 1995-96 home opener at Miami Arena then scoring two goals, dubbed a “Rat Trick” by Panthers goalie John Vanbiesbrouck. Mellanby led a surprisingly high scoring and successful Panthers team, fans celebrated each goal by throwing plastic rats. The custom lasted only one season, but now happens at the final horn of Panthers wins.)

The third-season Panthers upset their way to a Stanley Cup Final loss in The Year of the Rat, the euphoria swinging public opinion on public financing for a new arena in Sunrise. Ground broke on the arena the day of the 1996-97 home opener. After a playoff appearance in 1999-2000, their second season in Sunrise, the Panthers sank into a mediocrity morass.

They missed the playoffs for 11 consecutive seasons, then an NHL record. They had a winning road record in 2002-03, but missed the playoffs with the fifth-fewest home wins in NHL history. Seemingly cruising to a playoff appearance six years later, they suffered The Collapse of ‘09, losing lost nine of their last 16 games and missed the playoffs on the second tiebreaker.

Nothing helped. With six first-round picks over three NHL Drafts from 2001 to 2003, the Panthers should have built the core of a consistent powerhouse. Instead, they came out with three solid players and three busts who did nothing in the NHL. They took Nathan Horton instead of Eric Staal in 2003. Staal went to Carolina, a Panther’ division rival, and led them to a Stanley Cup by 2006. Horton asked to be traded from Florida in 2010.

Bierman remembers booster club events at what’s now Zoo Miami and people asking “’Who are the Florida Panthers? What are they?’ And, this was 15 years into the organization.”

As disheartening for a season-ticket holder, Bierman said, team executives would give him 2,000 to 3,000 free tickets to distribute and “They would be right on the glass. They weren’t cheap seats. It was lower bowl stuff.”

Kanas said each year at renewal time, “I’d delay, I’d delay and something would start getting to me... by the time the deadline is coming, ‘Ah, all right, one more. I can afford it.’ It’s not like I’m robbing my kids’ bread money or something like that. This is the first part of my entertainment budget every year.”

Longtime Panthers watchers, from inside, around and outside the organization place the swing in the franchise at Doug Cifu and Vincent Viola’s purchase in 2013, a year after the Panthers broke their playoff drought.

Coincidentally, when the Panthers had the No. 3 and No. 1 overall picks in the 2013 and 2014 NHL Drafts, instead of the mistakes of earlier years, they drafted current captain Aleksander Barkov and defenseman Aaron Ekblad. They’re the two longest-serving Panthers on the Stanley Cup champion team that’ll be parading in Fort Lauderdale Sunday.

“I have to see these guys with the Cup in real life,” Hearns said. “It’s still crazy to me. I’ve got to get that parade, I’ve got to get my eyes on that Cup and Barkov holding it. I’m so excited, I can’t believe it.”