Chirps, rats and ice cream: How the Panthers are staying loose during postseason run

Miami Herald

2 days ago

During a moment on the bench in Game 7 of the Florida Panthers' second-round Stanley Cup playoffs series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Sam Bennett and Carter Verhaeghe were caught in conversation.
'Oh, that feels [expletive] good, eh bud?' Bennett said to Verhaeghe.
'We get to keep on playing hockey,' Verhaeghe replied.
'I wasn't ready to stop playing hockey to be honest with you,' Bennett followed. 'I've got at least another month in me.'
That same day, on that same bench, Matthew Tkachuk at one point turned to Sam Reinhart and Evan Rodrigues.
'Isn't this the [expletive] best?' the star winger said. 'Enjoy it, baby! Enjoy it!'
The Panthers blew out the Maple Leafs that night 6-1 to advance to the Eastern Conference final. They are now are in the Stanley Cup Final for a third consecutive year and chasing a second consecutive championship.
But even as the stage gets bigger, this Panthers team has managed to stay loose and free, much like those conversations on the bench from Game 7 in Toronto when their season was possibly on the brink of ending.
There's pressure in these situations, of course, and those pressures get magnified as the postseason extends further and further.
But why let that change things? The Panthers aren't.
'It's just who we are,' Bennett said. 'We don't change the way we prepare for games, from regular season games to playoff games to Game 7 games. We're always joking around. Even before Game 7, there were just as many chirps and jokes going around before that game as preseason game. I think it's just the way our team prepares and it seems to work for us. Yeah, we enjoy this.'
That's evident by how this team goes about its business.
Staying loose on the bench
There are the conversations on the bench. Chirps fly constantly. Conversation is usually light and friendly — when it can be understood. Several players have joked that they sometimes can't understand Finnish defenseman Niko Mikkola when he returns to the bench after finishing a shift.
When it was brought to Mikkola's attention earlier in this playoff run that teammate and Sweden native Gustav Forsling said as much, Mikkola turned to Forsling, who was grinning from ear to ear, with bugged out eyes and a smirk that sent a message without any words being said.
Naturally, Mikkola had some joking (we think?) words to say.
'I've been trying to learn some Swedish also so maybe next year we can have a better connection,' Mikkola said.
Marchand and the rats
There's the postgame celebration with one of the newcomers, an enemy turned friend.
There was so much talk when Brad Marchand joined the Panthers at the trade deadline about how the dynamic would work with him on the team. Florida had intense playoff battles with him for the past two years when he was on the Boston Bruins — plus there was the whole Bennett-punching-him-thing in Round 2 last season.
'He's got a good right hook,' Marchand says now with a laugh.
But Marchand has fit in seamlessly as a veteran on this already veteran-laden group.
So much so that he's now the center of Florida's primary on-ice celebration that ties him into a big part of the team's past.
Marchand, affectionately or otherwise (depending on who you ask), has been referred to as a 'rat' over the course of his 16-season NHL career. Panthers fans after wins throw plastic or rubber rats on the ice — an homage to the 'Year of the Rat' season in 1995-96, lore that stems from Scott Mellanby killing a rat in the team's dressing room.
So why not combine the two?
After Florida's first win with Marchand in a game, on March 28 against Utah, Rodrigues (who has known Marchand and skated with him during the offseason in Boston for close to a decade) decided to fire off one of those rubber rats at Marchand.
'They just see all my family out there on the ice and want us to be together,' Marchand quipped. 'Rodrigues started it. One happened to be right there one time. He shot it at me and then it just kind of kept going. Barky jumped in and Chucky jumped in. Those are things that just kind of organically happen sometimes. We don't overthink it. ... Just a small sample size of one of the things that allows us to have some fun together.'
Panthers coach Paul Maurice got to experience the celebration first-hand for the first time after Florida's Game 2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes as he was walking to the team's dressing room, which is on the opposite end of the ice from the team benches.
'It's funny as hell,' Maurice said. 'Those are the really fun stories that are kind of organic. That's the players' time.'
Dairy Queen
And then there's how they spend their time on the road.
A photo went viral in between Games 1 and 2 of the Eastern Conference final of a half-dozen Panthers players — Marchand, Verhaeghe, Mikkola, forward Eetu Luostarinen, and defensemen Uvis Balinskis and Jaycob Megna — on a Dairy Queen run in Raleigh.
'It's important when you have days off and you don't think about hockey too much and just live your normal life,' Mikkola said.
That story took a life of its own as well after Marchand joked that he was eating a Dairy Queen Blizzard in the dressing room during the second intermission of Game 3 against the Hurricanes, right before the Panthers scored five goals.
(Marchand would later reveal he was actually eating honey.)
'I love a good Blizzard more than anybody,' Marchand said, 'but it's not something I've had in the middle of a game ... yet.'
Good news for Marchand and the group: There are dozens of Dairy Queen locations in Edmonton.