RAT-A-TAT-TAT : Rodentmania Sweeping Miami as Stunning Panthers Have the Town by the Tail

This is the tale of a man and his rat, or how the Florida Panthers got to the Eastern Conference finals in only their third NHL season and, in the process, made rodents socially acceptable.

It all began Oct. 8, 1995, when the Panthers were preparing for their home opener at the Miami Arena and someone spied a rat scurrying through the locker room. Right wing Scott Mellanby, with the instincts of a goal-scorer, lined it up and slammed the creature against the wall, killing it.

No one thought any more of the incident until after Mellanby scored two goals in the Panthers’ 4-3 victory over the Calgary Flames. “I said, ‘Instead of a hat trick, it was a rat trick,’ ” Panther goalie John Vanbiesbrouck said. “I thought it would be just a small, local story.”

Not a chance.

The Miami Herald wrote a mock obituary for the rat. Fans loved it. They took to throwing plastic rats onto the ice when Mellanby scored, a costly habit because Mellanby scored a career-high 32 times. The next step was tossing toy rats when any Panther scored. Recognizing a good opportunity, a pest-control company signed on as a sponsor. Its workers swarm onto the ice to collect the rats while fans at the 14,703-seat arena roar loudly enough to evoke memories of Chicago Stadium’s pandemonium.

“Fans here have been great and have started loving the sport. It’s like hockey in an amusement park,” Panther defenseman Ed Jovanovski said. “There’s a lady here who paints [toy rats] and sends one to every player. I got a whole family--the husband, the wife and a little son rat.”

The downpour was so thick in Game 3 of the Panthers’ Eastern Conference final series against Pittsburgh that linesman Ray Scapinello took shelter inside the Penguins’ net, crouching behind goalie Tom Barrasso. Toy stores long ago ran out of rats, but some parking lots near the arena offer a space and a rat for $10.

“You look at other teams and their traditions,” Jovanovski said. “Detroit has the octopus. We have the rats. We’ve got Orkin guys running out there. It’s very exciting. You probably see 10,000 rats on a good night.”

He didn’t exaggerate by much. South Florida is in love with the Panthers, who have surprised hockey observers--and themselves--by reaching the third round of postseason play in their first appearance. “It’s the year of the rat in the Chinese calendar,” forward Bill Lindsay said. “Maybe it’s destiny.”

Since the NHL’s first expansion in 1967-68, only one other third-year team--the 1974-75 New York Islanders--has reached the semifinals. When the Panthers defeated the Boston Bruins in five games in the first round, it was considered a moderate feat because the flailing Bruins had barely made the playoffs. But when the Panthers humbled the top-seeded Philadelphia Flyers in the second round, they certified themselves as Stanley Cup contenders.

They reaffirmed that by splitting the first four games of their series with the high-scoring Penguins, even though the combined regular-season production of their top two scorers (Mellanby with 70 points and Rob Niedermayer with 61) is 30 points short of Penguin center Mario Lemieux’s league-leading 161. They play Game 5 tonight in Pittsburgh and return to Miami Arena, dubbed “The Rats’ Nest,” on Thursday for Game 6.

“I’d be lying if I said even going into this year that we’d be at this stage,” said Mellanby, one of 10 players left from Florida’s June, 1993 expansion roster. “I knew we had solid defense and we added some guys with speed. We started well and got on a roll. It comes down to talent and getting on a roll, your goalie getting on a roll, and checking hard.

“We weren’t real hot going into the playoffs, and I think that’s because we were a little fatigued. Eighty-two games is a long grind, especially when you need everybody going hard every night. People were waiting for us to die all year and we didn’t.”

Said defenseman Paul Laus, whom the Panthers drafted from the Penguins: “We want to prove to a lot of people who don’t believe in us that we can play with anybody. And we’re still playing.”

They play a game that isn’t aesthetically pleasing to those who favor rink-wide passes and dazzling skills. Panther goals typically result when one player dumps the puck into the offensive zone, a second player outworks an opponent to win it along the boards and passes to a third Panther, who outmuscled someone to gain position in front of the net and deflect it in.

It’s not breathtaking, but it’s admirable because it demands a price of sweat and blood. Their 61-shot effort in Game 3 aside, the Panthers usually play basic hockey. Their offense is based on forechecking constantly to cause turnovers and using their surprising speed to break up ice on outnumbered rushes.

“Nobody wants to be accused on this team of not giving an honest effort,” said left wing Dave Lowry, who had 10 goals this season and has matched that in the playoffs. “When you’ve got 20 guys like that, you’re going to be competitive.”

Said Brian Skrudlund, the Panthers’ captain and another expansion holdover: “I’d be lying if I said [he thought they would have gotten this far this fast], but at the same time, I knew we would be competitive solely because of the people they brought in.”

The blueprint for a spirited team was conceived when Bob Clarke, then the Panthers’ general manager, and Bill Torrey, still their president, assessed the players who were available to them and to the Mighty Ducks in the 1993 expansion draft.

“Obviously, there were no 40-goal scorers. We could see we were going to have good goaltending and there were a lot of good, hard-working defensive-type players, and obviously that would be tailor-made for Roger [Neilson, the Panthers’ first coach],” Torrey said. “We made a list of guys on a skill basis and guys with heart. If we had the choice we were going to take a guy who would play hard every night. A lot of our success is the quality of the players. They’ve not only proven to be good players but competitive guys.”

What made it work was the Panthers won the coin flip to pick first among goalies and took Vanbiesbrouck, who had compiled solid credentials with the New York Rangers and wasn’t yet 30.

“He was a proven guy,” said Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira, whose team was one victory short of making the playoffs this season. “[Guy] Hebert has played well for us but as far as a guy that’s been the key for them, it’s Vanbiesbrouck. I tried to get guys we could grow with, guys who would have an up side. We tried to get guys who hadn’t reached their potential. . . . They were going for proven veterans, like Skrudlund and Mellanby.”

Vanbiesbrouck shuns being designated the team leader. “Sometimes you don’t want to be singled out because this is not a game of singletons. Our performances as a team speak volumes,” he said. “When teammates believe in each other, you fight harder. You go the extra mile. I really believe that.

“You can only build a team one brick at a time. We put the bricks together pretty good. We’ve got a pretty solid wall.”

They were almost good enough to make the playoffs in the tough East in their first two seasons, missing each time by a point. But Torrey felt that margin was deceptive, because they had actually been eliminated earlier. He fired Neilson and hired Doug MacLean, a former assistant coach with the St. Louis Blues, Washington Capitals and Detroit Red Wings.

“With Roger, it was a one goal, hang onto the seat of your pants kind of thing. Because of some of the kids we had coming, we felt if we stayed locked into that vein, we’d be there a long time,” said Torrey, who was the New York Islander general manager during their 1980-83 Cup streak. “We had some good kids and Roger doesn’t like to play rookies and kids, he likes to play veterans.

“At some point you’ve got to make a decision which way you’re going to go. Everybody said we’d slip if we made a change, but we felt we had more skill and the changes we made gave us more size and more speed.”

Said Lindsay: “Everyone was skeptical, but Doug came in and knew the things we had and built on them. He didn’t tear down what we had. He pushed us in a little different direction and it wasn’t traumatic at all.”

MacLean ditched the trap but kept defense a priority and gave players some freedom offensively. He also benefited from the arrival of 1994 draft pick Jovanovski, who promises to be a dominant force, and the flowering of 1993 pick Rob Niedermayer (25 goals) and 1995 pick Radek Dvorak.

Bryan Murray, who replaced Clarke in 1994, accelerated the team’s progress with some shrewd deals. He acquired winger Ray Sheppard from San Jose in March for a pair of draft picks, and rugged defensemen Terry Carkner (free agent) and Robert Svehla (two late draft picks). Ferreira, who could easily downplay the Panthers’ feats to make his team look better, instead admires them.

“The Panthers have probably been the most consistent team all year except for a stretch of 10 games or so with 25 games left in the season,” Ferreira said. “We’d like to be in their position. We’d like to have made the playoffs. They did it and we haven’t. They’re having their day.”

The Panthers are enjoying their day in the Florida sun. Lowry, who almost quit hockey a few years ago to become a policeman, went into a bagel shop near his home one day last week and got a standing ovation from the other patrons. “It doesn’t happen often,” he said, with a deadpan expression.

The only regrets belong to Mellanby, who gets no profits from the rat phenomenon he started. “I wish I did,” he said. “I’d own a team and be running it.”

There’s only one way to express his sentiments:

Rats!