Team: Florida Panthers

2015-16 Season

Division champions! They look pretty good; there's no way they could possibly end their best season in franchise history in utter heartbreak, can they? Roll the clip.

This after the Panthers were less than two minutes from forcing a seventh game at home. And yet, this is still the most successful year in franchise history for them. This isn't difficult to do, however, when you haven't even won a playoff series since 1996, or have made the postseason all of three times in the 21st century. You know who's made the playoffs more times this Willennium? The Oilers. Think about that for a second.

Your Head Coach

Gerard Gallant, who appears to be a superior coach to his replacement, Gerard Goofus.

Your Starting Goalie

The Panthers now feature a lovable tandem of Roberto Luongo and James Reimer. Because when you think of goalies that are gonna help your team get to the next level in the postseason, you think of Roberto Luongo and James Reimer. Neither of these goalies have certainly been subject to some of the most horrendous meltdowns in NHL playoff history. I'm sure if you draw the Bruins, you'll be just fine. This is fine.

New Things That Suck

Front office shakeup! Dale Tallon has been removed as GM, and Tom Rowe is promoted. Also, several firings. Despite one of their better seasons in recent history, you'd think the Panthers were a 21st century newspaper with all the layoffs they dished out. But I'm told it's actually a good thing, because the Panthers are getting more analytical*. Their previous regime was not all that into analytics**, whereas the new people are very analytically-inclined***.

*West Point alumni

**getting a degree from West Point

***from West Point

In case the above message is lost on you, consider the big uniform changes:

From a hockey standpoint, their biggest change this offseason was handing 30-year old Keith Yandle a $6.35MM contract for 7 years. I'm sure all those analytics said this was fine.

Things That Still Suck

This really is a franchise that is struggling with its own relevancy in a city full of sports teams that aren't the least bit relevant. The Heat and Marlins have fairly recent championships to their name, while the Dolphins in all of their irrelevancy have some history to build on. The Panthers biggest achievement was a guy who would be a fourth liner on a good team murdering a mouse two decades ago because their arena was that crappy.

The worst part of it all is that the Panthers fanbase gets really sensitive if you remind them of just how irrelevant they are. They can seem to conjure up every reason in the book for why people don't go to games aside from the obvious one: people in South Florida aren't just into hockey. You play in a state that has no natural ice, in a frontrunning awful sports city where the most popular sport is cocaine smuggling. Figure it out.

Also, bringing rats into an arena to throw on the ice as a "tradiiton" is disgusting. It's got to be, like, the 20th least hygenic thing someone in the state of Florida has done.

Why You Might Not Suck

You have a pretty accomplished veteran duo in 44-year old Jaromir Jagr and 37-year old Aaron Ekblad, so there's that.