Florida Panthers' 'Spacey in Space' sweatshirt to be retired
The Florida Panthers season is over and during Tuesday's exit interviews we learned the fate of the team’s popular player of the game award.
The “Spacey in Space” sweatshirt, which began earlier in the season and became so big that the actual Kevin Spacey got involved and even attended a game in March, will be retired, according to Shawn Thornton.
Speaking with reporters during locker clean out day, Thornton said, via George Richards, that the quirky sweatshirt will be retired and he may auction it off to benefit his charity.
The "Spacey in Space" sweatshirt was one of many memorable things about the 2015-16 Panthers season. They had their most successful regular season in franchise history; brought back the rats; won their division for the second time ever; and got a good glimpse of their future following solid seasons from the likes of Aaron Ekblad, Aleksander Barkov and Vince Trocheck, among others. Oh, and they were led in scoring by a hockey legend, Jaromir Jagr, who was seemingly recording a new milestone for his Hall of Fame resume on a weekly basis.
Barkov was actually the first Panthers player to wear the sweatshirt after a December game and Spacey got involved shortly after with this Tweet:
Barkov even thanked Spacey in a Tweet following his contract extension in January.
As the sweatshirt gets prepped for framing, the meaning behind Spacey’s floating head in space remains a mystery, with Panthers co-owner Doug Cifu telling us last month Thornton swore him to secrecy.
“My first reaction was to call Shawn Thornton,” Cifu said. “He told me and he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anybody. He’s a lot bigger and stronger than me so he told me he’d beat me up if I told anybody. I was like, ‘you know what? That’s pretty cool.’ And the guys absolutely loved it.”
The Panthers put the sweatshirts up for sale in January and they quickly became a hot seller. Over 2,000 have been sold since with proceeds benefiting the Florida Panthers Foundation and Kevin Spacey Foundation.
How do the Panthers top this for next season?
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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Sean_Leahy
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