\u201cFrom my heart I just want to say I never believed owning a sports team could be as invigorating, as heart-touching,\u201d said Teresa Viola, wife of Panthers owner Vincent Viola. \u201cI cannot thank you more from the bottom of my heart. I know you do it for all the right reasons, and I believe we can do it again. I just wanted to say, \u2018Go Cats.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to receiving their rings, general manager Bill Zito proposed a toast to the families of the players and personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth of the matter is, that toast was sincere and it was true. None of this happens without the support of our families and everyone\u2019s families,\u201d Zito said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe travel and play and we\u2019re in press conferences like this, but there are people who have to work at the arena 40-plus, let\u2019s just say 60-plus nights a year, and it\u2019s hard and you miss things. The sacrifices our families make for us because they love us, I don\u2019t think you can say thanks enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a beautiful, celebratory night for the Panthers. It may have been the second season in a row they\u2019ve celebrated like this, but it was just as special.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust before we got (the rings), we were sitting with the Maurice\u2019s and Paul (Maurice, Panthers coach) looked at me and said, \u2018I\u2019m so excited. I can\u2019t explain it.\u2019 I said, \u2018I know,\u2019\u201d Zito said. \u201cI think back, the excitement is the same if not better (this year). I think maybe we appreciate it even more, I\u2019m not sure. There\u2019s a bunch of little kids up there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFrom my heart I just want to say I never believed owning a sports team could be as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-194449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}