POSTCARD: Montour checks in from the Empire State

Hey Panthers fans,

For me, hitting 500 games was something I didn’t think about until it happened.

Having now reached that number, I think it’s just made me just look back at all of the success and good memories that I’ve had playing in the NHL up until this point. A dream of mine would be to play in 1,000 games, so being halfway there right now is pretty cool.

I always had confidence in myself to play a big, big role on a team, and I’ve been able to do that with the Panthers. I’ve also got to thank management, the staff and my teammates for believing that I could play this role and play big minutes on one of the top teams in the league.

In my mind, I still have a lot, a lot of hockey left.

These first five hundred games came so quick, so I feel I’ve got a lot of games left to continue improving and getting my game to the best place that it can possibly get to.

As a team, our mindset has been just looking ahead to the playoffs and trying to get our game in a good place. Win or lose, we’ve been playing our game. We’ve been collecting a lot of wins, but our mindset is to focus on the next one and focus on getting as good as we can.

In the middle of April, that’s when we want to be at our best.

It was nice to be recognized by the NHL as the Second Star of the Week on Monday, but my mindset is to just play the best hockey I can come the end of the year here. We have 20 games left and I’m striving to be better than I was last week, better than I was yesterday, and just continue to do that right into the playoffs.

We had a nice day off in New York City on Sunday. The weather was great, so I went for a walk with a couple of the guys. We did a nice lunch then just went back to the hotel, chilled out for a bit and then grabbed dinner.

We had a big game against the Rangers on Monday, so we got to bed pretty early.

We learned a lot from our experience last year and how hard we had to push from New Year right until the end. I think we’re just continuing that mindset. We’re getting every team’s best and playing tight, meaningful games against teams that are fighting for spots right now.

We just want to continue playing at that level and getting ready for April.

See you back in South Florida,

Brandon Montour

*As told to FloridaPanthers.com’s Jameson Olive