Dave Hyde: Panthers standout Carter Verhaeghe's lasting success started with minor league failure

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Mar 19, 2025

Published in Hockey

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Carter Verhaeghe remembers one overriding feature about playing parts of two seasons with the Missouri Mavericks in the low-level East Coast Hockey League.

“I remember it’s not where I wanted to be,’’ he said.

He remembers something else about the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey Association for parts of those same two seasons.

“The coach liked physical players,’’ he said. “I’m not necessarily a fighter, so it was either I was on the first line or not playing.”

Here’s the lasting lesson of the Florida Panthers as you study their success: Failure can be helpful. Sometimes it’s even necessary. Everywhere you look on the defending champs are coaches who have been fired and players who at one point have been considered busts, roundly doubted and not just traded by their original NHL team but helped out of town in some cases.

No one’s story is quite like that of Verhaeghe, the franchise leader in playoff goals and game-winning playoff goals. There’s a commonality to the careers of the Panthers’ talented core of Aaron Ekblad (first overall draft pick), Aleksander Barkov (second), Sam Reinhart (second), Sam Bennett (fourth), Seth Jones (fourth) and Matthew Tkachuk (sixth).

They all went right from a high draft pick directly to the NHL. Verhaeghe took the other way, the long road. He was a third-round pick who spent four seasons in the minors. He was traded twice in those years.

Tampa Bay, his third organization, sent him to the minor league Syracuse Crunch where he didn’t play the first six games in the 2017 season. Lineup changes were made after Syracuse lost four of those games. Verhaeghe wasn’t one of the changes. He still sat.

He was 21, saw his chance passing and knocked on coach Ben Groulx’s door.

“Hey, I’m a pretty good player,’’ he said. “I think I can help my team win some games. Give me a shot, I’ll show you what I can do.”

Eight years later, sitting at his Panthers locker after practice, Verhaeghe says, “I didn’t really have anything to lose going in there. I wasn’t playing or anything. What’s the worst thing that could’ve happened? I wasn’t playing already.”

He didn’t play the next Syracuse game. Another loss.

“Then he’s like, ‘You know what?’ — and he gave me a shot,’’ Verhaeghe said.

One game led to another. And another. Verhaeghe, as it turned out, didn’t stop playing for Syracuse until he led the AHL in scoring the following season. That’s when Tampa Bay put him in a fourth-line role of their championship season.

Tampa Bay was so overstocked with scorers they couldn’t sign Verhaeghe. So, Bill Zito grabbed him in one of his opening moves with the Panthers before the 2020 season.

Suddenly, the kid riding buses and eating subs in the ECHL was on the Panthers’ top line. Suddenly, the winger who couldn’t get on the ice in Syracuse was scoring 18, 24, 42 and 34 goals his first four seasons. He signed a $7.5 million-a-year contract at the start of this season.

“When he is on, what works for him is the ability to get on a puck, create a loose puck or a break of formation for the other team,’’ Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Most of his best hockey is with Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk where it wasn’t a five-pass game up the ice to a great scoring chance.

“It’s the quick transition off a turnover. … They’re best in chaos, when there’s a broken play, when there’s something that’s more instinct than a system read.”

Verhaeghe has 17 goals this year after a slow start. Maybe it was fatigue from too much hockey the previous two seasons. Maybe it was just a slow start. But Maurice saw him coming on in February and now the playoffs are starting to come into view again.

“Hey, we’ll be ready,’’ he says.

He’s 29 now, a veteran on a team of veterans in the prime of their careers. His journey is just different.

“It’s a crazy story,’’ he said. “Honestly, I never dreamed I could make it to the NHL, let alone play however long I have already. You know what? I just took it day by day, taking a step in my game each season, doing whatever I had to get better.”