Stephen Weiss has the perfect hockey smile. He's missing one of his front teeth, courtesy of a flying puck to the mouth. He has a temporary tooth that he pops in, but never during games. "What would be the point?" he said the other day, smiling. "I'll get it fixed permanently, but why do it before I retire. So it can get knocked out again?"
Weiss' gap-toothed badge of honor was on full display Sunday.
By the end of the night he was smiling like we haven't seen in 10 years, and largely because of him so were an arena full of Panthers fans on what qualified as not much less than a historic night for the Florida Panthers.
"It was worth the wait," Weiss said afterward, still with that little-boy-waiting-for-the-tooth-fairy grin. "It was worth the wait."
Weiss' two goals powered the Cats past the New Jersey Devils 4-2 to even their NHL first-round playoff series at one game apiece and provide the first postseason victory in Weiss' pro career spanning 10 Panthers seasons and a club record for most games played.
More important, it marked this franchise's first win in the Stanley Cup playoffs in 5,476 days, or one day short of 15 years.
Florida had lost nine consecutive playoff games through the years and 13 of its past 14 before Sunday's drought-busting break-through. You began to get the feeling there was something about the Panthers and playoff hockey that went about as well together down here as snow skis on South Beach.
Until Sunday, at long last.
When it finally ended — the game and the long drought — the ice was turning black, one rat at a time.
The sight of hundreds of black rats falling on a rectangle of blinding white ice has a rather apocalyptic visual impact, but what it represented and felt like on this night was pure nirvana to a swaying, rocking arena.
Almost 20,000 fans were standing, making sonic noise, waving red "rally towels" in a blizzard, and the ice was turning black as the rubber rats rained and reigned.
Only in South Florida does that mean a hockey celebration and, in this, case, an underlying layer of relief.
Panthers players skated slowly through the rats, sticks raised, acknowledging the bedlam that sounded a lot like love.
This one was a long, long, looooong time coming.
Local droughts
The fan tradition of pelting the ice with rubber rats is now permitted only after victories, and for the Panthers, Sunday's triumph was the franchise's first win in the Stanley Cup playoffs since April 17, 1997 (also known, in sports, as "forever.")
None of our pro franchises or their fans have waited as long as these fans did to celebrate Sunday.
The Dolphins' current drought since the most recent playoff victory is 4,125 days (and counting), 11-plus years since the last postseason win on Dec. 30, 2000.
The Marlins-record current steak is 3,096 days (and counting), eight-plus years since the last postseason win on Oct. 25, 2003.
The Heat's record drought was 2,031 days, or 5 1/2 calendar years, from the franchise's 1988 inception to its first playoff win on April 28, 1994.
For the Panthers, Sunday's end to the 15-year hex didn't come easily.
If 4-2 sounds like a comfortable win, you weren't watching and you certainly weren't here.
Florida's "safe" 3-0 lead, on Weiss' two goals and one by Marcel Goc, was anything but. Jersey scored twice with goals 74 seconds apart early in the third as the jammed ice barn groaned and fell quiet. Then the Devils spent much of the rest of the period dominating the puck to such a degree it seemed the visitors were on a perpetual power play even when they weren't.
Cats goaltender Jose Theodore was up to the assault, but the Panthers plainly were holding on, hanging on, their fans trying to will the minutes to melt away faster.
New Jersey pulled its goaltender, Martin Brodeur, with 1:15 to play, only adding to the frantic finish. That's when Florida scored an open-net goal by Tomas Fleischman as time expired to make the victory look like what it wasn't: comfortable.
The night was the opposite of Friday's Game 1, when the Cats were down 3-0 early in a dismal first period before rallying to lose 3-2. This time it was a seemingly secure 3-0 Florida lead that ended up on thin ice.
New life
Weiss had said before this series, "there's no pressure on us." And he was right, then. But all that changed with the Game 1 home loss. Sunday the pressure swung as Florida needed to win for any chance at winning its first playoff series since 1996.
Now the Cats have given themselves that fighting chance.
The 15-year franchise drought is dead, the Panthers are alive, and you could see it all on Stephen Weiss' face.
The tooth is still missing, but now, at last, that long-elusive first playoff win no longer is.
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