Brandon Montour Grateful For Warm Welcome Back from South Florida
“Growing this sportrt in South Florida, I felt like I was a big part of that, and I obviously missed that,” Montour said.
SUNRISE, Fla. — After winning the Stanley Cup in late June, Brandon Montour did not have a whole lot of time to reflect on his time with the Florida Panthers.
His contract was set to expire a day after the team’s victory parade at Fort Lauderdale Beach and he needed to make a decision on his future promptly after having one last celebration with the guys.
He ultimately opted to sign with the Seattle Kraken, and he finally got his chance to see just how much he meant to the South Florida community when a packed Amerant Bank Arena welcomed him back with a loud ovation on Saturday night.
“I think you kind of just look back at all the memories,” Montour told Pucks and Palms. “Obviously, you wish you had much more time. You look back at the last time i was in this building and it’s been almost a year, but it’s gone by so fast.
“Hosting the Stanley Cup here, and then celebrating, but at the same time, figuring out where the hell I was going to play, what was the best situation for me and my family moving forward within days. It moved by so quick.”
With the Montours quickly having to find a new home in Seattle following the seven-year deal he signed with the Kraken while preparing to welcome a new baby girl into the world in December, it did not allow much time to reflect.
But when he looked up at the Jumbotron at Amerant Bank Arena to a sea of memories, and then heard the raucous ovation that came after it, he knew his time in South Florida was something special.
“Coming back here, it seems like I still live here,” Montour said. “Seeing the guys — in the end, it’s 60 minutes, and you just play hockey, but you miss those guys for sure. And it sounded loud. The video was nice and all I did was try to enjoy my time, enjoy the fans, enjoyed my teammates.
“We had a ton of experiences here we’re going to remember. And growing this sportrt in South Florida, I felt like I was a big part of that, and I obviously missed that.”
Montour has watched the South Florida hockey community grow a lot since getting traded from the division rival Buffalo Sabres to the Panthers at the 2021 NHL trade deadline.
When he made his visits to Sunrise as a member of the Sabres — last doing so in November of 2019 — the Panthers struggled to fill their building. Now, there is genuine buzz around the team that he helped create with a Stanley Cup title.
“The last time I was here [as a visitor] there were under 10,000 fans. Now, it’s completely changed. It made a 360,” Montour said. “To see how it is now, to see how hockey has grown in Florida, the passion in Fort Lauderdale and Sunrise.
“We were here a couple days early, but every day, there were multiple people that wherever I was — whether it’s the beach or walking to a restaurant — somebody was stopping me. So for that to happen and to feel the love still, you obviously miss that, and to see them have a reaction here in Fort Lauderdale, it’s pretty cool. I’m happy that I was a part of it.”
Montour saw arguably as much growth in his own game as the hockey community in South Florida did during his time there.
He blossomed from a bottom-pairing defenseman into a top-of-the-line blueliner who can play 25 minutes per night, run the top power play unit and eventually set franchise records for points and goals in a season as a defenseman.
Montour had a lot of big moments in a Panthers uniform.
He tied Game 7 of Florida’s first-round series against the Boston Bruins in 2023 with a minute to go to send the game to overtime and eventually complete the comeback from down 3-1 in the series. He logged a whopping 58 minutes of time-on-ice in Florida’s 4OT thriller of a Game 1 victory against the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2023 Eastern Conference final.
Through it all, he gained the ability to be the guy for a team on the blueline in the biggest of moments.
“[Paul Maurice] gave me the opportunity and talented, talented players made it easy to play, but gave me the confidence to kind of play my gave,” Montour said. “I felt that i had the confidence to be able to do that, but to show it on an everyday basis and be a big-time player on a big-time team that won a Stanley Cup and been to the Finals and long playoff runs, that’s all you want as an athlete.
Montour has been able to carry that over with him to the Kraken so far — scoring 10 goals and 27 points in 57 games this season — and he wants to see them make that jump as well.
They currently sit nine points out of the final wild card spot in the West, but Montour hopes he can be a part of helping this young Kraken team make the jump towards contention just as he did with the Panthers.
“I’ve come to do that again here in Seattle,” Montour said. “We’ve got a ways to go, it’s going to take some time, and hopefully we can get this team in the position to do that in the future as well.”