From golf carts to great ice: Panthers hold first practice at new Fort Lauderdale facility
Florida is moving from the Coral Springs Ice Den to the brand new Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale
The Florida Panthers held their first official practice at the Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday afternoon.
It’s a new perk for the Panthers, having the practice facility in the same area that the majority of the players, coaches and staff call home.
A few people arrived to the brand-new facility by car, but several others took the opportunity to commute to work using less traditional means of transportation.
“It’s a pretty cool lot right now,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “It’s got everything. I heard there are E-bikes, I don’t know if anybody just biked here, but there’s a few golf carts and a couple cars for the people that don’t live here. I think there’s only four or five people that don’t live in Fort Lauderdale, and they’re pretty jealous seeing the golf carts.”
Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice enjoyed a predawn walk to work.
“I didn’t make coffee at home because the coffee here is better,” Maurice quipped, adding that the stroll took him about ten minutes. You can probably give the nod on the high-end coffee to Panthers General Manager Bill Zito.
Practice wasn’t scheduled for several hours after Maurice arrived. Panthers players began trickling on the ice, starting with goaltenders Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz, about 15 minutes prior to the noon start time.
Florida held a spirited 30 minute practice, with the ice, boards and glass all appearing to perform quite well for being taken on its first test drive.
One side of the practice rink had several rows of seating stretching from one end of the ice to the other, with extra-cozy, Panthers logo-embroidered seats along the glass.
After practice, several players spoke highly of the ice, as did Maurice, while pointing out how difficult that can be to get right.
“This place is fantastic, and it's got all the highest quality equipment that you can find for a professional sports team, but it's the ice. At the end of the day, that's the key piece, and the ice was hard,” Maurice said. “We went 30 minutes up and down, and that's almost the threshold for most sheets of ice with an NHL team, and it was really for more. That's the key one. It's miles better than I could have hoped. I haven't skated on too many sheets of ice that hard on the first skate.”
Florida’s new locker room was quite big, with good-sized stalls lining the walls from door to door, while the near wall featured four large TVs hanging over a fully-stocked supply area, bookended by the two goalie stalls.
“I like how many TVs are here,” Panthers captain Sasha Barkov said with a smile. “There’s like four in this room, six in the meal room and probably 10 in the gym.”
Barkov’s locker is conveniently located directly across the four big screens in the locker room.
To paraphrase Mel Brooks, It’s good to be the captain.
Florida’s video room is also spacious, with several rows of plush, comfortable chairs all facing one massive TV screen and what appeared to be a lowerable projection screen.
It was in there that Maurice addressed the media and described one thing in particular he liked about the new building, and it had nothing to do with the great ice or state-of-the-art equipment.
“All the facilities create an environment of connections,” Maurice said. “The way it's laid out, I know the weight room is down (the hall), but everything else is in one central area. So the connections and the number of times that they cross paths to talk to each other, it's important for the fabric of the team.”
Scroll through the gallery below to see photos of the IcePlex:
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