FORT LAUDERDALE — They’ll be back. No one doubts that. If it was an odd and unexpected season for the Florida Panthers, it was an equally odd first day of summer for a team that missed the playoffs.
That started with Paul Maurice wearing khaki shorts and a breezy, blue shirt, as if to dress himself into a good mood — or at least try after a season when his two-time Stanley Cup champions admirably walked the gangplank.
“Eight active fractures,’’ Maurice said at one point Thursday.
There’s the defining statistic of their season. Eight broken players’ bones still healing. There was something deeply defining in the manner the Panthers continually committed themselves, even as injuries piled up right from the first practice when, “The Big Man,” as Maurice calls Aleksander Barkov, was lost for the season.
But there was something equally defining in this first day off. No whining. No boo-hoo pessimism. No doubt what’s coming next year, too.
“I’d rather miss the playoffs than lose the finals,’’ Marchand said. “To go that far affects your next year as well. To go that deep, and you lose — at the end of the day, what’s the difference between losing (in the final) and not making the playoffs?
“There’s one winner and everyone else is a loser.”
That’s a full talk-show topic.
“I’d be more disappointed with this year if we didn’t have this group going into next year that we have,’’ Marchand said. “We’ll still be on paper, one of, if not the best team in the league.”
Marchand was initially hurt in December, fought his way through January, thought he was OK in February and then had to call it a season the first week of March. That’s was the story of so many Panthers this year. The flip side was the likes of Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett and Anton Lundell setting career highs for minutes played trying to cover for injured teammates.
No doubt missing the playoffs allows them to rest their bodies and minds in a manner they haven’t done the previous three summers. Some already have rested enough, though.
“Yes!” Barkov said when asked he was looking forward to playing for Finland in the World Championships.
Several Panthers will play in the tournament, meaning their summer vacations won’t be completely restful. The team is fine with that, too, even encouraging it as long as the players are fully healthy, general manager Bill Zito said.
It’s Zito on stage now. Everything changed for the Panthers went he came in the door nearly six years ago. He thinks outside the rink, like Tuesday, when he said everyone repeats the cliché of “Two plus two equaling four.’
“Why didn’t you just say, ‘Five minus one?’ ” he asked.
Zito might have a top-10 draft pick, depending on how a few things break. Or he might not have one at all with it lost to Chicago. Regardless, his big decision is goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who is a free agent. Barkov spoke for the players, and fans, when saying, “Everyone in South Florida wants him back.”
Bobrovsky also is 38 in September and had a career-low .877-save percentage this season. So the heavyweight question is if he can carry this team to another Stanley Cup in the way a goalie must at times. And, if not him, then who? Or maybe bring Bobrovsky and another goalie in?
Somewhere in there is the five-minus-one answer Zito must find. Win or learn. That’s the mantra this team adopted from Maurice. Zito was asked what they learned this messy season. He said he’s thinking on it.
“Most of the answer, I haven’t learned,’’ he said.
Maurice was asked something simpler: Was this a lost season?
“That will depend on how we handle it,’’ Maurice said.
He noticed somewhere in March he disliked how the Panthers played. He understood why it happened with so many injured regulars and minor-league fill-ins. He also made a note to, “take care of that in training camp,’’ he said.
The two-time champs will be healthy then. And hungry. This odd year will turn to motivational fuel by then, like water to wine. It was odd right to these first-day-of-summer’s interviews, which weren’t downcast or uncertain about the future in the manner of, say, the Miami Heat across town.
Little went right this Panthers season. But it was easy to still see why it went so right the previous two years. Maybe this season’s eulogy was best said by Detroit coach Todd McLellan after the Panthers won the season finale for both teams 8-1. He was furious about his team’s effort.
“Both teams came in with nothing on the line, and you could see their championship pedigree,’’ McLellan said. “So, I’m going to compliment the Panthers. That pedigree runs throughout their organization. They came and they played, and it meant something.”
Until next year.
Florida Panthers forward Brad Marchand speaks during a news conference at the Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel)