Explain it? Andrew Brunette gave a small nod and earnest voice to the question of how the Florida Panthers got here — meaning, first place in the Eastern Conference, on the short list of the Stanley Cup contenders and such an all-around good story the franchise that’s never been on anyone’s marquee kicks off TNT’s new broadcast package Wednesday night.
“We play fast,” the Florida Panthers coach said. “We’re a puck-possession team. We’re built to play that way. The reason why is we’re four lines deep that can score every night, have a very active [defense] and great goal-tending.”
For all these decades, the annual question of mid-February has been if the Panthers would make the playoffs — and we know the booby trap that answer typically went down.
