Panthers Trade Suits for Robes as Winning Streak Continues

The Florida Panthers brought back a new tradition with them after a successful two-game set. And after winning their sixth-straight, why not have fun with it?

Photos via Florida Panthers (Twitter // FlaPanthers)

Along with a five-game winning streak, the Florida Panthers brought home a fun new tradition with them from their trip to Tampere, Finland last week.

Prior to the team’s first game back home after a two-game sweep of the Dallas Stars in the captain’s hometown, Aleksander Barkov texted the team group chat to wear the sauna robes general manager Bill Zito gifted them in Finland to the rink on Thursday night.

“I thought it was pretty funny, actually,” Evan Rodrigues told Pucks and Palms. “I think every guy on our team thought they were the one getting pranked and they were going to be the only one showing up in the robe. But everyone committed to it, and it seems to be working for us.”

The Panthers wore the blue robes, adorned with the team’s alternate palm tree and stick logo (the brainchild of goalie coach Robb Tallas’ wife, Lucy) to the rink ahead of both games in Finland and wound up winning both by a combined score of 10-4.

And when you’re winning, why not keep it going?

“Well, you gotta be some kind of superstitious, right?” Barkov said. “While it’s working for us, we’ll keep going with that and we’ll see later.”

It continued working for them on Thursday night, with the Panthers rolling to their sixth consecutive victory with a 6-2 blowout of the Nashville Predators.

The tradition carried over and their play did, too.

“Good on them,” coach Paul Maurice said. “It takes some courage to walk into an NHL rink in the robes, and I think it got them to start on time.”

That last sentence can be taken very literally with Rodrigues, who scored the first goal of the game in both halves of the doubleheader in Finland before extending his personal goal streak to three games.

In other words, he has never not scored a goal in a game after wearing a sauna robe to the rink all throughout his hockey career, as he confirmed to Pucks and Palms on Friday morning.

“I’m gonna have to keep it going then, huh?” he said.

His goal in the opener in Finland — 20 seconds into the game, which was the fastest goal scored in an NHL game played away from North America — was his first since the team’s season opener on Oct. 8 for the Bruins.

Rodrigues had been generating a lot of chances, frustratingly to no avail, but the trip helped ease those tensions a little bit, and now all of a sudden he has achieved ‘Honorary Finn’ status.

“I think before that, I was getting the chances, they just weren’t going in, and that’s how hockey is sometimes,” Rodrigues said. “Sometimes, it feels like everything you touch goes in the net and other times it feels like you can’t buy one. So, just sticking with it, I thought our line has been good and we’ve been playing really well together. I thought we had a good weekend in Finland and continued it yesterday, we’ll have to continue that.”

Whether or not it was the robes that helped break out of the slump remains to be seen, but Barkov was happy to see his linemate enjoying his home country and its traditions.

“I mean, he loved playing in Finland, and I know he was there before, and he loved the city,” the captain said. “Maybe that got him more confidence, and yeah, I don’t see him stopping.”

There have been a lot of fun moments, stemming from both the trip out to Finland and the newfound tradition, that have brought the team closer together.

When they first showed up to Nokia Arena for the game on Friday, rookie Mackie Samoksevich was the only player to show up wearing a shirt underneath the robes.

He inevitably got some ribbing for that rookie mistake.

“I did, I did,” Samoskevich said with a laugh after he was asked if he got some flack for that. “They said that shirts were optional and I wasn’t sure if I was showing too much skin or not.”

He did not make the same mistake again in the two games since, and he seems to be enjoying himself.

“I saw everyone not wearing shirts, so I had to join in on that,” he said.

He has not tried wearing it away from the rink since he has gotten home from Finland quite yet.

“But I should,” he said. “It’s definitely comfortable, it’s definitely nice. It’s way better than wearing a suit, for sure. Something about the rink in just shorts and a robe is so great. So definitely gotta keep winning and keep that going.”

The Panthers have not quite gotten Maurice on board with trading his suit for a robe anytime soon — especially behind the bench.

“Nobody, nobody needs to see that,” Maurice said. “These fine people pay way too much money to have to be subjected to those nightmares that would be in them.

“There may be one, yeah,” he said when pressed on whether or not he received one. “But nobody needs to see it.”

When the Panthers returned from Finland, Maurice expressed some concern about the unknown of a team returning from a trip so unique — one where a lot of players got to explore a new city, learn more about their teammates, and spend their downtime heading off to sauna islands — and going back to the regular routine along with the unusual seven-hour time change.

The players seemed to figure out a way to bring back some of the fun from Finland and crack a few laughs to help them get back up for the first game back.

“When you got back, even two years ago, but certainly last year, we talk about the idea of working fun and having fun, but truly working hard and having confidence in that’s what you are going to do when you go out there and hit the ice,” coach Paul Maurice said. “So, when you ask these men to compete, prepare and perform at a very high level, you can’t be spitting nails at the other 23 hours of the day. You’ve got to find a way to enjoy it and have some fun.

“You are always, as a coach, watching that balance. You are not running a country club here. … Going to Finland, the Florida experience, all of those things, if you have worked as hard as you possibly can, then you should enjoy it, and we would encourage that.”

And hey, while they are winning, the tradition could stick around for just a little bit longer.

“We’ll see,” Barkov said with a laugh, when asked if the robes will return once more for Saturday’s clash with the Philadelphia Flyers.