Panthers' Paul Maurice makes eye-opening ‘best' claim after winning Stanley Cup

Yahoo

23-06-2025

The post Panthers' Paul Maurice makes eye-opening 'best' claim after winning Stanley Cup appeared first on ClutchPoints.
After a long season full of ups and downs, the Florida Panthers are at the top of the mountain once again. Like they did so many times in these playoffs, the Panthers took control at the end of the series and won the Stanley Cup with a dominant 5-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6.
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This Panthers team will be remembered for playing its best hockey when it really needed to, and the Cup Final was a perfect example of that. This is a team with both star power and depth, and now it is etched in history as back-to-back champions.
After the series ended, Paul Maurice took it a step further when describing this 2024-25 group with a bold claim, via WSVN 7 News.
'Well, this is a heck of a team. This is the best team I've ever coached from a talent point of view,' Maurice said. 'Is Anton Lundell our third-line center? Because I think he's plus-20 in the playoffs. He's a brilliant young player. If that's your third line, you're gonna win a lot of games.
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'We're just very, very deep for sure. It's wonderful.'
The Panthers showed off that depth and talent throughout the playoffs. After cruising through the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, Florida dominated the Toronto Maple Leafs on the road in both Games 5 and 7 to advance to the conference finals, where it made light work of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Then, after the first four games of the Cup Final were very tightly contested and the series was tied at two, the Panthers tightened up again and showed the Oilers that they are in a different class. Maurice's club outscored Edmonton 10-3 over the last two games to get their hands on another Stanley Cup.
The Panthers' depth is also exemplified by how many standout performers they had in the playoffs. Brad Marchand, Sergei Bobrovsky and eventual winner Sam Bennett all had convincing cases to win the Conn Smythe as the MVP of the playoffs, and that's even before getting to captain Aleksander Barkov, star forward Matthew Tkachuk or Sam Reinhart, who had four goals in Game 6.
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The Panthers now have a difficult offseason ahead with some big-name free agents hitting the market. However, this team will go down in history as one of the best of this era after a dominant playoff run.
Related: Brad Marchand's 8-word admission after Panthers' Stanley Cup victory will scare rest of the NHL
Related: Panthers' Sam Bennett drops truth bomb on winning Conn Smythe Trophy