Panthers are an experiment worth seeing through, with or without Gallant

Gerard Gallant won 96 of the 186 games he worked as head coach of the Florida Panthers. He lost only 65 in regulation time. That's good.

The 53-year-old was behind the bench of the most successful Panthers team in franchise history, which eclipsed 100 points last season, won the Atlantic Division, and made the playoffs. He was a 2016 Jack Adams Award finalist, finishing second, and signed through 2019.

But his record, contract, and accomplishments didn't matter to the folks running the show in Sunrise. As of Sunday night, Gallant's the former coach of the Panthers, fired and left outside PNC Arena in Raleigh to find his way home.

And if you're wondering why, you're not alone.

It's not you, it's me

There was discord between Gallant and management. The game's "insiders" are about the only ones not surprised at what transpired Sunday night.

The Panthers are owned by Vincent Viola, a billionaire West Point graduate who made his fortune on Wall Street. The club's president and CEO, Steve Caldwell, is 36 years old, served in the U.S. Army, has an MBA, and was a former vice president at Goldman Sachs. He's the furthest from a hockey guy.

More men like Caldwell with military and business backgrounds have been brought in to work important management roles. As The Globe and Mail's James Mirtle wrote, "The team's fundamental ethos has become one of Wall Street."

And so far, it's working. The Panthers are winning. Attendance is up. Florida's spending more money (and losing more of it, but that's besides the point, for now).

The team's embraced analytics, something Viola knows a thing or two about from his time in the pits as a trader. The club's new analytics director was a math professor at West Point in his former life. General manager - and new interim head coach - Tom Rowe is a hockey lifer, but he's buying what the Panthers are selling. He took over for respected Stanley Cup winner Dale Tallon, who went from GM to president of hockey operations, in the spring.

Gallant was never management's guy. And while, according to Mirtle, Viola encourages disharmony, perhaps Gallant was a little too disharmonious. His firing is another sign the Panthers are moving all-in on their Wall Street and West Point approach to building a hockey team. You can disagree, but you must be on board - so it appears.

While the optics of Gallant's firing aren't the best - the cab fiasco, and no official release after the club landed in Chicago late Sunday night - the Panthers have earned the benefit of the doubt, at least in the short term.

No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but Gallant's going to be cashing Panthers checks for a while, and, what do you know, there's a new NHL team in Las Vegas that needs a head coach. He'll be fine.

Change is good

Hockey's an old-school game. Teams talk about "culture change" all the time, but the Panthers are actually changing their culture, taking it even further than that, and that's encouraging. For hockey in Florida, for the NHL, and for hockey as a whole. The game's not going to change when the same lifers are recycled through each team. And for hockey to survive in South Florida, it may take a radical, outside-the-box approach - one the Panthers, as evidenced by their new-look front office, are clearly hell bent on employing.

When Florida plays Chicago on Tuesday, it will ice a very good hockey team. Through 21 games, the Panthers had the NHL's 10th-best possession numbers - up from last season. And they're missing Jonathan Huberdeau and Nick Bjugstad. Jussi Jokinen's only played 12 games, Jaromir Jagr has three goals on 51 shots, and Aleksander Barkov has two on 41.

And, hey, the whole thing may not work. The advanced numbers show the Panthers had luck on their side last season, as a team - Florida had the league's second-highest PDO - and individually:

The long game

It's easy to crucify the Panthers for letting a successful coach walk. But that's easy, that's taking the short view. Florida's thinking long term. It's got a plan. It needed a plan. That it's unorthodox is almost better, because the club's jumped way out in front of a movement that's slowly gaining traction throughout the league. And whether it works or not, the Panthers are going to be one of the more interesting teams to watch over the next few years. When was the last time you could say that?

We won't know whether Florida's decision to fire Gallant was the right one for a while. And in a 140-character world, nobody's got that kind of patience. But these Panthers, Viola's Panthers, the Wall Street and West Point Panthers, may turn out to be worth the wait. It's worth finding out, at the very least.