‘There was a pall on us.’ The Florida Panthers and the season that would not be derailed | Opinion

It was minus-5 degrees outside but not as cold as it had been when we spoke Wednesday, Bill Zito on the phone from Edmonton. Even for a hockey man raised in Wisconsin winters, western Canada in January is its own kind of freezing.

Zito is the general manager in charge of the best hockey team on the planet, or at least the one that leads the NHL in goal scoring and sits atop ESPN’s power rankings. It is a Florida Panthers team that believes it can win the first Stanley Cup in the franchise’s 28 seasons.

Ask Zito if he knew going in that his team might be this good. There is a long pause.

“As a manager I loathe to answer the question honestly,” he says. “It’s like asking a supermodel, ‘Do you think you’re attractive.’ “

When he does get around to that honest answer: ”Yes.”

That’s today. Even after the hiccup of Tuesday night’s 5-1 loss in Calgary, faith is strong that this is a special Cats team at the midpoint of a special season. That the longtime dynamic nucleus of Aleksander (Sasha) Barkov, All-Star Jonathan Huberdeau and Aaron Ekblad finally have just the right cast around them.

Ten weeks earlier, what seems like yesterday, soon after it had begun, the Panthers’ season exploded.

“There was a pall on us,” says Zito.

Pall (noun): A cloth spread over a coffin, hearse or tomb; A dark cloud or covering of smoke.

Florida was off to a perfect 7-0 start, justifying all of the high expectations, when a decade-old scandal from his Chicago days arose and forced the sudden resignation of Joel Quenneville, the second-winningest coach in NHL history.

Quenneville had been the Blackhawks coach in 2010 and failed to act when a Chicago minor-leaguer, Kyle Beach, who had suddenly come forward, alleged sexual assault by the team’s video coach. There was no doubting Beach’s claim. “Coach Q” was done.

“Heartbreaking is the word. On so many different levels,” Zito says now. “Trying to balance ... the thing that hit me, being a father, was the kids in hockey. Where are we headed? What are we doing? It was the humanity side of things. But collectively we had a job to do. You put your work boots on and go to work.”

Andrew Brunette had never been a head coach before suddenly being promoted to replace Quennevlle on an interim basis.

Everything is great now. This week the Panthers visited Snowy Owl Day Sled Tours in Canmore, Alberta, for a team dog-sledding excursion.

“The dogs, they’re pulling us along., but they’re all pulling together and doing this together,” Brunette said. “It was a good team-building activity.”

Said center Sam Bennett, tied for the team lead with 16 goals: “We had a blast out there.”

It was just before Halloween when the nightmare happened, when the coaching change draped in scandal hit. But what might have derailed the season has steeled the team’s resolve.

A lot is going right these days in South Florida sports.

The Miami Heat is toying with the top of the NBA’s Eastern Conference and now healthier than it has been for most of the season..

Hurricanes men’s basketball leads the Atlantic Coast Conference standings as March Madness looms — a massive comeback season for coach Jim Larranaga.

Hopes and excitement for UM football have spiked since the hiring of Mario Cristobal.

But the best team in Greater Miami doesn’t operate in cleats or sneakers. Our most realistic championship hopes are running on blades.

And it isn’t how good the Panthers are that makes their season extraordinary.

It is what they have overcome.

“They’ve been through a lot,” said Brunette, saying the season was about “getting to the new normal.”

Zito says the most important game of the season thus far was the first one after Quenneville was out. He knew that if a 7-0 team lost its first game post-scandal under its interim coach that the instant narrative would have been a team rocked and off the rails.

“There was concern the next loss would get blamed on that,” Zito recalls. “I remember it was a big, big relief when we did win that game. It was big, like, ‘We’re OK. We’re going to be OK.’ ”

Zito says he and Quenneville have spoken “a couple of times” since his departure. That “he certainly isn’t persona non grata.”

But this is a team that has moved on. Brunette, “Bruno,” still wears the interim label, but Zito seems open-minded.

“I told Andrew he’s going to get a long runway. He deserves a chance to get some normalcy. To coach the team. He’s done a fantastic job,” Zito says. “He takes over during a trying time, he gets through that. Then Sasha gets hurt. Then COVID hits. Gets through all that.”

Zito adds, “I want him to be able to make mistakes. I want to empower him to be comfortable.”

The surest way for Brunette to keep his job is if this season — the one that survived an explosion — ends the way the Panthers think it can, with what Zito calls “the big prize.”