Quote:
Originally Posted by Macho0978
We don't need Edmonton to win, Florida and Colorado were rebuilding at the same time as Edmonton. Florida is another case of a team being at the bottom for around 5 years and now are having sustained success because of it. Edmonton would get the owners attention more so than Florida, but just being in the finals has to get their attention.
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Oh ho ho my young friend, that's simply not the case. It was much, much longer.
The reality is that bottoming out can lead to success, but it is an excruciatingly long road to get there.
Since 1996, the famous year they went to the finals, until about 2021, when the current version of the team took form, the Panthers had a total of 6 seasons where they cleared the 90 point threshold. 6 years out of 25, most of those were spaced 5-10 years apart.
The reality of the Panthers of the past was a team that didn't do even a little bit to commit to winning. They were happy to simply exist in the league, drawing just enough revenue to keep afloat and maintain the asset for ownership. It was baaaaad, bad bad bad, for a long time here. You could call it self-satisfied abysmal-ness.
I think my point is that the Panthers got good when a new owner came in and fully committed to building a winning team, regardless of the cost. He probably lost some money in the first couple years, but spent it on good management and operations people. That translated to some on-ice success, but it really was impactful in the off-ice stuff to build an actual fanbase and ticket sales. They built a culture and identity with their fans, and now it's an actual thing to be a Florida Panthers fan down here, whereas before it was only for the die-hards.
When I became a fan, I got hooked in because of the high draft picks like Ekblad and Barkov etc. But it still has taken over a decade to get to this point, and really, they only took off recently.
There is no easy road to success, but the one thing I know for sure that gets a team there is good management. I don't know if we have that yet in Conroy, but I'm hopeful that he's at least above average. Treliving had some great qualities and some absolute dog#### qualities as a GM, which makes him average overall, and he was a big reason why a team that drafted well and had a lot of great pieces in place, couldn't get over the hump.
Your team building starts with ownership committed to winning, then you need really good managers to execute a clear vision. Mostly it flows from there...management works on drafting and team building, finance and cap management, community outreach and fan-base building etc.
I think the flames have a lot of those things in place already. I think that ownership is committed to winning, but only on their terms, which could be a problem without a good GM in place. I simply hope that Craig is that guy. He had a good start, but now we need to see him actually build his vision of a team. Fingers crossed...it's going to take some time to be good again.