Panthers Must Prove They Can Win

from Ethan J. Skolnick of the Sun-Sentinel, So this column won’t move many. And even for the 10,000 or so who still give a puck, there won’t be much that Sexton could say to persuade them that his Panthers will fare better than the Panthers of Bryan Murray or Rick Dudley or Mike Keenan or Jacques Martin, all names with more pizzazz whose teams petered out prior to the postseason. Nor did Sexton completely persuade me, either, not even with his perfectly sensible talk about building through the draft, continuing to remake the culture, trying to upgrade the “level of nastiness” and insisting that every acquired player passes “the character sniff test.” He didn’t persuade me that Stephen Weiss will finally emerge as an 80-point front-line center, or that there’s enough added mobility on defense to compensate for Jay Bouwmeester’s absence, or even that “knock on wood, if we can stay healthy, we’re going to stay in the [playoff] hunt.” He didn’t persuade me only because, after all that’s not occurred under his predecessors, you must wear your trusty shield of skepticism whenever encountering a Panthers executive. more