Mentality Monsters: how nothing seems to phase the Florida Panthers
If no one takes a punch like the Florida Panthers, how do they bounce back from those punches so well?
When Jurgen Klopp described one of his Liverpool teams as “mentality monsters”, he was describing a team who seemed to overcome any challenge, on or off the field. That particular team overcame a 3-0 aggregate deficit in the second leg of a Champions League semifinal against Lionel Messi’s Barcelona, a tournament they’d go on to win. Klopp’s teams always kept running, kept working no matter the circumstance, no matter how difficult the obstacles.
It’s hard to say how much hockey Jurgen Klopp watches, but if he’s been watching any of these three Florida Panthers Stanley Cup Final runs, he’d see traits that might make him remember those Liverpool teams he coached. No matter the situation, the challenge or the task at hand, the Florida Panthers seem eerily calm. How else could you describe a locker room joking about who will score an overtime winner minutes after giving up the latest tying goal in Stanley Cup Final history?
“It was the opposite of what you guys probably thought was going on in the locker room,” Matthew Tkachuk said after Game 2. “We were upbeat, joking around, picking guys who we thought were going to score. We were having some fun.”
Paul Maurice had a different look at what makes his team so resilient, so strong in face of these challenges, though the essence of what he’s conveying feels the same.
“You kinda get used to it. You get beat up a little bit, wake up the next morning and you don’t feel great,” Maurice said. “but for the guys on both teams, you get used to it.”
Adversity is routine during a long playoff run, but it’s not easy to deal with adversity like it is routine. Maybe that’s why the Panthers have a 9-3 road record in this postseason and have set a NHL record for consecutive road games with 3+ goals with 10 while also becoming the first team to score 50 road goals in one playoff run.
“Our game travels,’’ Seth Jones said. “We don’t change our game based off where we’re playing. Obviously it’s great to play at home in front of our fans and feel that energy and feel that momentum at times. We play the same way in front of them.”
Experience as much as tactics plays a role too. At the start of the Paul Maurice era, the Panthers were barely scraping by in a playoff race and down 3-1 in a series to Boston before turning that around. They blew a 3-0 series lead in the last final and lost a game 8-1 in the process.
And that experience, whether it came with the Panthers or not, contributes to that sense of calm and even lightness as the stakes couldn’t be higher.
“Obviously you’re disappointed they tied it up like that, but the emotion on the bench and in the room after the third, we’ve always had a very calm team,” Brad Marchand said after his Game 2 2OT winner. “I think you draw from your experiences. We do a really good job of focusing on the moment. A lot of guys have been through big moments, and we have a lot of really good leaders on this team, so you just try to draw on that. It didn’t seem like there’s any panic. There’s a good feeling in the room. It doesn’t faze guys. You can’t let it this time of year.”
Every great team is resilient to some degree, but some are better at embracing that challenge than others. That’s what “mentality monsters” really gets down to. Are you willing to give that extra little bit at a time when others can’t or won’t do the same? Every Florida Panthers player seems to love that kind of moment.
“Yeah, I mean, this isn’t our first time here,” Tkachuk said. “And to get here, you go through a lot of ups and downs. Got a lot of battle scars.
“And hey, (we) looked at the bright side. We get to play a few more periods with each other.”
Many teams that love to play with each other don’t win championships. Many only get one crack at a title and then the chance goes away. Many teams show plenty of resilience on their way to winning titles, and plenty of others still fall short. Is there any secret sauce to how the Panthers seem to thrive in the most challenging of moments?
Maybe there isn’t anything special, whether it’s a strong dressing room of unique characters, experience in playing in difficult spots or lightening the mood with a joke or two. All of this feels normal, even routine for them. Perhaps that is what makes the Panthers so great when their backs are against the wall; that there doesn’t seem to be anything special about their success in those moments at all.