You know the Florida Panthers are playing well when there are plastic rats hitting NHL rinks.
The Panthers were 5-1 winners in Buffalo on Tuesday night, extending their current winning streak to 10 games. When combined with the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 loss in Philadelphia, it increased their lead in the NHL's Atlantic Division to five points. It's a remarkable story with veterans Jaromir Jagr and Roberto Luongo leading a group of young stars that have become an overnight sensation and giving some hope to a fanbase that has really only known losing over the past two decades.
And that newfound success means the rats are back, even on the road in Buffalo as this one was on Tuesday night.
Panthers fans started throwing rats on the ice as a goal celebration during the 1995-96 after former forward Scott Mellanby had a run-in with a live rat in the team's locker room before their season opener. He scored two goals later that night and his teammate, goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, referred to his night as a "rat trick."
That resulted in Panthers goals that season being celebrated like this.
The Panthers made a stunning run to the Stanley Cup Final that season that included a huge upset over the heavily favored Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference finals. The deeper the Panthers went into the playoffs, the more rats hit the ice after each goal.
Panthers fans launched so many rats during games and caused such lenghty delays that the league added a new rule that could result in teams getting penalized for delay of game of fans throw objects on the ice. The rule, of course, includes an exception for hat tricks.
That rule, combined with the fact the Panthers haven't had many good seasons in the years since that playof run, meant that rat tradition slowly started to fade away. But in recent years they have started to make a little bit of a comeback, especially during the 2011-12 season when the Panthers surprisingly won the Southeast Division. They are starting to show up a little more often this season as well after victories.
Even though the Panthers won a division title as recently as 2012, that team was a pretty massive fluke (they were actually outscored by 24 goals during the season) and probably one of the weakest division winners in recent NHL history. This team, though, is legitimately good and looks like it is going to be a strong contender in the Atlantic Division the rest of the way.
And the more wins they pile up, the more rats we are probably going to see.
