from Greg Cote of the Miami Herald,

It’s a big and exciting week for our forgotten franchise, for all the wrong reasons. The Florida Panthers have introduced a new head coach and are now preparing to make the No. 1 overall pick in the NHL Draft on Friday — both of those things indicators of what you have been more so than where you’re headed.

Successful clubs don’t change coaches, let alone as consistently as this one does.

Winning teams don’t keep getting the loser’s consolation of high draft choices.

“We can’t keep drafting in the front,” general manager Dale Tallon said by phone Wednesday from the draft site in Philadelphia. “I want to be picking 30th, 29th. We’ve got to turn the tide. I realize we have to start turning the corner, and do it now.”

Beleaguered Cats fans have been hearing the same thing, in some form, from somebody, for seemingly forever. How long can you claim urgency? How long can you ask for patience?

With this club, the future is always now, but somehow it never gets here.

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