SUNRISE, Fla. — Well, they did it. That’s the first thing to say. Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito had just finished with his children’s homework Tuesday night as it happened. Coach Paul Maurice sat in his home with a cat and blanket in his lap, not daring to move a muscle and threaten some karmic change.
“If we make the playoffs, do I get ice cream?” asked one of Zito’s twin, 11-year-old daughters.
“If we make the playoffs you get a limo on your birthday,’’ dad said.
Where did that come from? Zito didn’t know. He just knew as he watched Pittsburgh lose to Chicago on Tuesday night to put the Panthers in the playoffs that it meant more than making a typical postseason should. Maurice understood that, too.
“Normally, I think making the playoffs are an expectation, particularly if you’re building something,’’ Zito said. “The playoffs shouldn’t be seen as an accomplishment as much as what should be expected. However, for what we went through, this year it’s a time of a bit of reflection and appreciation for what was accomplished.”
Let’s go back a year: Some saw success last season when the Panthers won the President’s Cup as the top regular-season team, eked past Washington for their first playoff win in a quarter-century and then were run off the ice in the second round by Tampa Bay.
Zito saw a problem.
“It was crystal clear from a hockey sense,’’ he said. “We had to modify our approach if we wanted to win in the playoffs.”
The Panthers were too cute, too fun, too circus-style open in a way that won in the regular season but didn’t translate in the more-rigid playoffs. You don’t have to understand hockey to understand the larger idea Zito had.
“We’re going to pursue excellence,’’ he said.
So, Zito didn’t re-sign the NHL’s winningest coach last year, traded the franchise’s all-time leading scorer in a great move for new star Matthew Tkachuk and hired a coach to change the way this team thought. Maurice, like Zito, had a tough job to do in changing the way a quasi-successful team played.
There were added problems: The Panthers had $8 million less in salary-cap money to work without mainly due to bad contract buyouts, suffered an early loss to team leader Patric Hornqvist to a concussion, then absences by stars Aaron Ekblad and Aleksander Barkov, and weathered a road schedule from hell in December and January.
All that meant a few tough months gave way to the past several weeks where every game felt like a must win. Every loss sat in their stomach. It’s why Maurice stood there after practice Wednesday saying that for the first time in weeks there was, “the right amount of lack of tension in an off day.”
The Panthers could breathe a little even with the regular-season finale looming Thursday against Carolina. They’re in the playoffs. Where they’re in and who they’ll play wasn’t known yet, but that’s a long way from some of the hard questions they faced this year.
“Being honest about your game the entire year is an important thing, so we had some fairly graphic and direct meetings this year after games we didn’t do what we needed to do,’’ Maurice said. “We also lost games we played damn well, and I treated them the way they should be treated after that.
“I think there’s an honesty here. These guys did achieve something for me. They went from a softer perimeter team to a team that knows how to play hockey.”
The work isn’t done, of course. But they had a few hours to admire the view on Wednesday before focusing back on what’s ahead.
“An appropriate sense of achievement,’’ Maurice called it. “Not in terms of making the playoffs. But achievement in terms of defining your game. And we still have a ways to go with that. But changing to the way you play in the playoffs is a really hard thing to do.”
It’s why this season’s playoff berth meant something extra to this teams. Just as the Zito twins, Frankie and Gigi. It means enough for dad to promise a limo ride on their birthday.
