Florida Outgrows Expansion Tag : Hockey: Panthers, who entered the NHL the same season as the Ducks, lead the league right now.

The Florida Panthers haven’t even played three seasons, and already they have fired a coach who nearly took them to the playoffs, are having trouble drawing fans and might move to Nashville. . . .

And they have the best record in the NHL.

Does anybody smell a rat?

Scott Mellanby probably will come to rue the day he saw a rodent in the Panthers’ dressing room, since rats have now become the team’s rather offensive unofficial mascot. The Panthers couldn’t exterminate the fad if they wanted to.

“The Rat’s the Rat,” shrugged captain Brian Skrudland.

Mellanby, the team’s leading scorer, came upon a rat before a game in early October, when the Panthers were 0-1 and instinctively killed it. (He since has apologized for the act.) When he scored two goals in a 4-3 victory over Calgary that night, goalie John Vanbiesbrouck quipped that Mellanby had the team’s first “rat trick” and a mascot was born.

A month and a half later, the rat story is insignificant compared to the tale of the Panthers, who sit atop the NHL standings at 14-5-1.

The Panthers and Mighty Ducks are never going to be real rivals--they only play each other twice a year--but after joining the league together in 1993 they are always going to be compared. For now, the edge goes to the Panthers, who are 67-60-24 through their first 152 games. The Ducks are 59-83-10.

The Ducks have followed one philosophy, parting with most of their expansion-draft players for younger players and putting first-round picks Paul Kariya, Oleg Tverdovsky and Chad Kilger into the lineup quickly.

The Panthers have gone more slowly, though this was to be the year they would go to a youth movement--and maybe take a hit for it, all in the name of progress.

Instead, they have 29 points at roughly the quarter-season mark.

There are more youngsters in the lineup--including all three of the team’s first-round draft picks--but the Panthers haven’t had even a twinge of a growing pain. How can that be?

“It starts with the goaltending,” said Coach Doug MacLean, who moved over from his job as director of player personnel after the team fired Roger Neilson last summer. “And we’ve gotten contributions from a lot of guys. We’ve got 10 guys in double digits, that’s the most in the league. We’ve gotten point production from the blue line; that’s critical for any team. . . . Basically what I’m saying is I don’t have a clue.”

Plain old hard work and veteran leadership are part of it, and Skrudland heads a group of 11 expansion draft players who haven’t been pushed aside. They have combined for 84 points, led by 20 from Mellanby, the eighth forward picked in the expansion draft.

The five expansion players left on the Ducks have combined for only 20 points, eight each from center Bob Corkum and defenseman Bobby Dollas, two each by right wing Joe Sacco and defenseman Randy Ladouceur.

“One thing, from Day 1, we’ve been a very tight-knit group,” Skrudland said. “There are 15 or 16 of us here, who, let’s face it, had nowhere to go where anybody wanted us in their top 20. You mix that with some No. 1 picks . . . “

And you often get team turmoil, the product of resentment over lost ice time and salary discrepancies. Not with the Panthers.

“I hear all the time about these cocky kids coming in today making millions,” Skrudland said. “We’ve got Rob Niedermayer, and he’s come in with a good solid head on his shoulders from the first day.”

With all that said, Florida is on top of the world with a leading scorer who is 29. The Ducks are .500 with a leading scorer who is 21.

First team to the Stanley Cup wins.