Our Picks: Florida Panthers All Quarter-Century Team
The NHL announced its All-Quarter Century Team for the Florida Panthers on Friday. We helped vote on that. Here’s our ballot, and why we went that route.
The NHL announced its All-Quarter Century roster for the Florida Panthers on Friday night.
It featured some familiar faces from Florida’s Stanley Cup winning team — Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Sergei Bobrovsky Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling — and one player who made his dues in the 1990s.
The league asked a few people around the Panthers to vote on their teams of players who made the most impact on the Panthers in the years 2000 to 2024.
I helped vote on that.
I won’t do much stalling here, let’s get into the final picks, get into my picks and then I’ll explain why I made the decisions I did.
NHL’s All-Quarter Century Team
First Team: Jonathan Huberdeau, Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Aaron Ekblad, Gustav Forsling, Roberto Luongo
Second Team: Pavel Bure, Olli Jokinen, Sam Reinhart, Jay Bouwmeester, Robert Svehla, Sergei Bobrovsky
Our All-Quarter Century Team
First Team: Jonathan Huberdeau, Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Aaron Ekblad, Gustav Forsling, Roberto Luongo
Second Team: Pavel Bure, Olli Jokinen, Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, Brian Campbell, Sergei Bobrovsky
The Explanation
Well, as you can see, my first team and the final product were identitical. I would imagaine that one was a slam dunk for everyone else who voted on this team, too.
Barkov, Ekblad, Roberto Luongo and Jonathan Huberdeau hold a large majority of the records in Florida’s record book while Gustav Forsling has quickly become one of the best defensive defensemen that the Panthers have ever employed.
Four of the six of those players — including the ever-so clutch Matthew Tkachuk —were on last year’s Stanley Cup team.
Slam dunk.
The only position on that first team where I had some difficulty choosing was the goaltender, because Bobrovsky is well-accomplished in his time in South Florida, leading the Panthers to multiple Cup Final appearances, winning the thing in 2024 and placing third in Vezina Trophy voting that same year, but his regular-season career in Sunrise has been up-and-down and Luongo has more longevity here.
Second team it is.
And that’s where things got interesting for us.
The forwards on the second team were, once again, identical to what ended up being the consensus. Pavel Bure (who I mulled over excluding due to only having a season and a half worth of games in the allotted span) was absolutely dominant in his time, Olli Jokinen was the previous holder of a lot of the records Barkov, Huberdeau and Ekblad broke and Sam Reinhart casually scored 63 goals last season while shoehorning himself as an important piece of that Cup-winning core.
Defense is where things get interesting.
The final tally had Jay Bouwmeester and Robert Svehla as its defensemen. I had neither of them on my ballot, though Bouwmeester just missed the cut as I was mulling over who I was going to pick.
My ballot read Brian Campbell and Brandon Montour.
Campbell is likely the more popular of those two choices. He was the face of those early 2010s teams — including the one that made the playoffs in 2012 — and provided a nice bridge between the Luongo-Jokinen teams of the 2000s to the Barkov-Ekblad core the Panthers have today. He was a Panther for a while, played solid hockey in both ends and I still see fans wearing his jersey in the arena to this day. Seems solid enough.
Montour is the interesting choice, because he was only around for three-and-a-half seasons. He had the best offensive season in franchise history in 2022-23 — tying Jason Garrison’s franchise record of 16 goals in a season while tallying 73 points, a stand-alone record — and played north of 20 minutes per night in back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances. His impact on and off the ice for that roster and his big moments in the playoffs — including the game-tying goal in Game 7 in Boston with a minute to go in regulation in 2023 —made him my choice for the team.
There were a few other options here. Dmitry Kulikov has the longevity across two different stints and made the block that led to Reinhart’s Stanley Cup winning goal. But he made his dues as a bottom pair defenseman and has not made the jump to the elite levels some of these other guys have. Keith Yandle came to mind, but his defensive woes outweighed the offensive punch he provided in the mid-2010s.
It was an interesting exercise — especially for me: A kid born in 2001 who did not grow up watching the Panthers — and it was an honor being a part of it. I had a lot of fun with it and I hope you guys had fun crawling into my mind for a second as I discussed my picks.
Anyways, Happy New Year.
(Yes, I know it’s Jan. 4. Sorry, Larry David.)