Tuesday night, the Florida Panthers gave us all a masterclass in leadership.
What was amazing to watch and listen to after the game was every single member of the Panthers finding six different ways to say the same thing. The commitment to win. The commitment to each other. It was as much about the emotional as it was about strategy.
To a man, they spoke of the respect for each and every teammate, whether they played or not. It wasn’t about analytics or statistics, it was about appreciation for each other. It was, in a word, about culture. There was no better example of that culture than the decision by the leadership group to present the Cup to all the first-time winners before the back-to-back champions carried the trophy.
With all the talk in recent weeks about how Florida has such an advantage in luring players to play in the Sunshine State, it is the culture — not the taxes, not the weather — that the winners celebrated. It wasn’t about money. It was about people. Taxes don’t create culture. People create culture.
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By the way, that’s the type of culture that we see now in Winnipeg — the culture that helped the Jets win the Presidents’ Trophy.
In so many ways, it’s why hockey is the ultimate team sport. Stars rarely play more than a third of the game, and role players can make a difference in a team’s success. The Panthers were just that much better than Edmonton.
What always amazes me is the price players pay to win the Stanley Cup. Matthew Tkachuk had an adductor torn off the bone and a sports hernia, Aleksander Barkov had his hand cut open in Game 1 and played the whole series with the palm of his hand stitched up, and Sam Reinhart, who scored four times in the last game, had a Grade 2 MCL strain that would have put most players out for eight weeks. He missed two games in the third round.
Playing through pain, paying the price. It is all part of the story of winning.
So now, just when we thought the season was over, it’s on to the draft, and free agency, where the only injuries to report will be the bruised wallets of the owners.
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