There's no telling how the NHL Finals, the best hockey league in the world, which started tonight and brings together the Vegas Golden Knights and the Florida Panthers, will unfold and end, but the winner is guaranteed to make history.
Neither team has ever won a premiership, so for one of them it will be the first Stanley Cup in their history. You don't have to be a great expert on U.S. geography to understand that their mere finals would have been presented a few years ago as a vision of the end times.
What about Las Vegas and Greater Miami, the symbols of the warm South and cities where it doesn't snow at all, and ice hockey? It turns out that the traditional affinity between this sport and cold places has become obsolete, and there is really no more in it.
Once upon a time, teams from the North and Canada dominated the NHL unchallenged, but the big money invested in the new teams from the South trumped tradition and weather. While Las Vegas and Miami can't play hockey outdoors, this climate deficit doesn't diminish the popularity and achievement of both finalists.
Rest assured that both T Mobile Arena, home to the 17,20-seat Golden Knights, and FLA Live Arena, the Panthers' <>,<>-seat arena, won't have a single seat available in any of the Finals games. Even if viewers don't see the ice outside the indoor arena at all.
Stone from Las Vegas. Not the favorite team in the Finals, Photo: USA TODAY Sports
A script that can't be written
Florida Panthers, the Eastern Conference champions, are the biggest sensation of the season. The Miami suburban group, formed only in the 1990s, was known for most of its years for mediocrity and disappointing failures. Here and there she flashed, but the sparks were soon extinguished. A year ago there was a turnaround,
When the Panthers finished the regular season with the best record of any team in the league, it was already over in the second round of the playoffs, in the derby meeting against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
This year it went the other way around. The Florida Panthers had a weak regular season, barely making the playoffs, straight to face the menacing Boston, which had run them all over in the regular season. Everyone expected Boston to win the sweep — and they were wrong. The Panthers forced a thrilling seven-game series on Boston, winning the decisive game.
They went on to oust two more favorites, Toronto and Carolina, and from stage to stage they only improved, thanks in large part to veteran goalkeeper Sergei Bobrowski. Bobrowski was not included in the starting lineup for the first four games of the series against Boston, and his team lost three of them. Since coach Paul Morris regained faith in him and put him back in the lineup as first goalie, Florida's goal has been almost completely locked.
The Vegas Golden Knights didn't make the playoffs at all last year, for the first time in their short five-year history. As a result, she quickly changed coaches: Peter de Bar was fired, and Bruce Cassidy was brought in from Boston.
Florida goalkeeper Bobrowski. Many rights successfully, photo: AP
The decision paid off, because this year the team from the gambling city looks great. Even a never-ending series of injuries to its stars and the ongoing uncertainty about the first goalkeeper (Cassidy tried no fewer than five different goalkeepers during the season) did not detract from the performance. Vegas finished the regular season in first place in the Pacific Conference and had no trouble making the playoffs.
According to most bookmakers, the Golden Knights' chances of winning the final are somewhat better, but the gaps, however small, are very small. Vegas displayed on its way to the finals an offensive hockey that yielded many goals, and its main weapon is pioneering excellence in goal exploitation rates.
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Florida, on the other hand, was brittle defensively, saved by Bobrowski's goalie. On the other hand, the Panthers proved during the playoffs that they can adapt to their opponents' style of play and improve over the course of the series, so a fascinating matchup awaits us, the exact scenario of which no one can predict.
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