WINNIPEG

If you thought big cats were being phased out of the circus, you obviously aren’t familiar with the Florida Panthers.

The NHL’s most polarizing team and its travelling sideshow made a stop in Winnipeg Thursday, just in time for another media explosion stemming from news about their bizarre management structure.

Mired in a 2-3-3 rut since head coach Gerard Gallant was fired and replaced on an interim basis by general manager Tom Rowe, the Panthers have perplexing questions to answer throughout the organization, including this big one:

Who is in charge?

Respected TSN insiders Darren Dreger and Bob McKenzie were both reporting Thursday that former general manager Dale Tallon is back in a similar role, dealing with other GMs around the league, after getting bumped up to president of hockey operations earlier this year.

Tallon re-engaging day to day is good news. Bizarre reaction by @FlaPanthers last night to a positive move. https://t.co/rHn58mkX3g — Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) December 15, 2016

It makes sense, given Tallon’s vast experience, and given that Rowe now has his hands full trying to coach the team.

What doesn’t make as much sense is the fact the Panthers denied the reports and even called the sources of the information into question.

“Nothing has changed at all,” Rowe said before the Panthers took on the Winnipeg Jets at MTS Centre Thursday.

“I know it’s out there. I guess it just tells ya you can believe or not believe what’s on Twitter all the time.

“I know what was reported yesterday. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if (Dreger) had all the facts straight or not. He’s a great reporter but I was a little surprised to see it out there the way it was.”

Rowe’s comments were consistent with the message a team source put out through Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Harvey Fialkov, saying “There’s a lot of click bait fake news floating around.”

Panthers source says there's a lot of "click bait fake news floating around" #flapanthers — Harvey Fialkov (@hfialkov) December 15, 2016

That didn’t sit well with McKenzie, who delivered a rant on TSN radio in which he defended Dreger and called out any suggestion by people in the Panthers organization that “nothing has changed.”

“Dale Tallon has a louder voice now than he did before,” McKenzie said. “As far as what Darren Dreger reported yesterday, it was entirely accurate. We don’t make stuff up.

“Dale’s talking to general managers today, in a manner in which he hasn’t been speaking to them on the same level in the past weeks and months. How long that lasts, your guess is as good as mine.”

The Panthers have been a simmering mess since the summer when owner Vinnie Viola shook up the front office and hired an analytics-heavy staff, headed by veteran hockey man Rowe.

That was followed by the awkward dismissal of Gallant, after a game in Raleigh, N.C., where the former coach was seen leaving the arena in a taxi and making his own travel arrangements to get home.

That firing was at least in part the result of a philosophical divide over analytics between Gallant and the front office staff, including Rowe and assistant GMs Steve Werier and Eric Joyce.

People on both sides of the analytics debate are watching the Panthers closely, the pro-analytics crowd eagerly searching for further validation, the anti-analytics group hoping to slow down a growing trend.

Of course, analytics have nothing to do with the Panthers publicly shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly.

First it was the Gallant fiasco and now this open questioning of some of hockey’s most trusted news sources.

And all over what?

It seems like semantics.

All anyone would have had to do is acknowledge that Tallon has taken on a more active role, with Rowe working behind the bench.

But Tallon is old school, not a pure analytics guy, and maybe that doesn’t fit the overall vision for the hockey club.

So, is it about appearances?

“There’s no secret we’re more of a collaborative group,” Rowe said. “Vinnie is involved, (vice-chairman) Doug Cifu is involved and then Dale Tallon, with his talent of evaluating players. And we have two of the smartest assistant GMs in the business who handle the cap and come up with different scenarios.”

As for analytics, Rowe says the perception of his team’s use of advanced stats is off base.

“We use it, but so does everyone else,” he said. “You’re crazy if you don’t. It gives you some information but it’s only a piece, it’s not the whole thing.

“I know everybody thinks we use it 150%, in every single decision we make, every line we put together. But we really don’t. It’s a source of information. We’ve been tagged as nothing but analytics, ‘Moneyhockey’ or ‘Moneyball’ or whatever you want to call it.”

As the carnival goes on around them, the Panthers players are trying to figure out a way to get back on track. Pegged as a playoff team in pre-season predictions, they are struggling mightily and their frustration showed after a 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday.

Goaltender Roberto Luongo smashed his stick and threw a tantrum as he went off the ice. Rowe was heard hurling obscenities at his players from the bench.

It’s looking ugly from the top down in the organization, but at least one veteran player is not about to blame off-ice distractions.

“We’ve got no problem with anything that’s going on,” winger Jaromir Jagr said. “Maybe to you guys it looks strange but for us, we just don’t play good enough to win the hockey games. It’s not because of something going on, that we fired the coach or whatever. It’s because we don’t play good enough to win the games and we have to fix it as the players.”

twyman@postmedia.com

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