Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Playoffs A Priority For The Florida Panthers

02/10/2016 at 8:12am EST

from Chris Johnston of Sportsnet,

Simply making the playoffs may not be the goal for players inside the Panthers dressing room, but Peter Luukko doesn’t shy away from how important it would be for business at the end of a season where seemingly everything has fallen into place.

“It would be huge,” Luukko told Sportsnet during a 7-4 win over Buffalo. “I mean one of the issues as new ownership that we’ve had to deal with is the fact that the team was only in [the post-season] once in the last 15 years.

“So we had lost, as an organization, our relevancy.”

That has changed in a major way during a memorable 2015-16 season.

There is something special going on in South Florida, where Jaromir Jagr is closing in on two major NHL milestones and Roberto Luongo is sipping from the fountain of youth with a .928 save percentage. They have two burgeoning franchise cornerstones in Aaron Ekblad and Aleksander Barkov, and have signed an $86-million deal with Broward County in December that should quell any relocation talk for good.

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About Kukla's Korner Hockey

Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

From breaking news to in-depth stories around the league, KK Hockey is updated with fresh stories all day long and will bring you the latest news as quickly as possible.

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