South Florida’s sports teams, like its bad drivers, are shared by three counties – but there are degrees of affiliation. The Heat are Miami’s team, playing downtown on Biscayne Blvd. The Panthers, on the other hand, play in Sunrise and practice in Holiday Park, in a beautiful facility that on playoff nights became a surrogate arena, its restaurant and rink awash with fans – some homegrown, others nostalgic northern transplants. Broward is, inarguably, South Florida’s hockey heartland (as incongruous as that title may sound). So it was entirely fitting – in an even greater height-of-absurdity way – that the team whose home ice is next to the Everglades paraded the Stanley Cup on Fort Lauderdale Beach.
