Appreciation: The Panthers set their own path to a 2nd consecutive Stanley Cup
Associated Press
The best team in hockey, again, was a team that did things totally its own way.
The Florida Panthers went to Finland early in the season and wore their gifts from that trip — plush robes, a nod to the sauna culture there — to the next few games instead of suits and didn't care how ridiculous that looked. They blared Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al' in the locker room after wins for reasons that nobody fully understood. They not only welcomed a one-time hated rival in Brad Marchand into the fold from Boston at the trade deadline, but they became Blizzard-eating buddies with him on off days during the playoffs.
'This team,' forward Matthew Tkachuk said at one point this season, shaking his head, 'is special.'
'Different,' was the word forward Evan Rodrigues used.
'They are something else,' coach Paul Maurice said.
Call them whatever you want. But you have to call them back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, an absolutely absurd development for a franchise that spent most of its first three decades unable to win anything but now simply cannot lose.
Final score: Panthers 5, Edmonton 1. Final score of the series: Panthers 4, Oilers 2. The result: Another Cup, and a team that won't be forgotten.
'It's incredible. It's a feeling you can't really describe,' Marchand said. 'Seeing the family and everyone up there and everyone that supported me and helped me get to this point, words can't put this into reality how great it feels. Such an incredible group.'
South Florida was a football town when the Miami Dolphins reigned 50 years ago, then became a basketball town when the Miami Heat started winning championships, and it's always been a baseball town because of the area's strong Latino culture. But now, it's a hockey town.
The Panthers never had any doubt that they would repeat as Stanley Cup champions. They didn't care what the regular season results were, nor did they care about their seeding, nor did they care that they were going to have to start every playoff series on the road and probably had the most difficult of all possible paths: in-state rival Tampa Bay in Round 1, a now-or-never Toronto team in Round 2, a tough-as-nails Carolina team for the Eastern Conference title, and after all that, Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers were waiting to avenge their loss in last year's Stanley Cup Final.
The Lightning were overmatched. The Maple Leafs wore down. The Hurricanes couldn't keep up. And the Oilers, after a year of studying, had even fewer answers for the big test.
'We've got to be a dynasty now,' Tkachuk said. 'It's three years in a row, finals, two championships. This team is so special. Stanley Cup champion. This never gets old.'
Everything changed for Florida in July 2022 when general manager Bill Zito shocked everybody by swinging a trade with Calgary for Tkachuk. They went to the final in 2023 and got rolled by Vegas. Back to the final they went in 2024, nearly blowing a 3-0 lead before beating Edmonton for the franchise's first title. This season, there were injuries and suspensions and trades to deal with.
But there was no doubt. Maurice said all that mattered was getting into the playoffs healthy. He was right.
Tkachuk came back despite a torn adductor in time for Game 1 of the playoffs. Aaron Ekblad was back from a 20-game suspension for taking a banned substance in time for Game 3 of Round 1. The Panthers kept getting stronger and stronger, all the way to the end.
They have a player in captain Aleksander Barkov who rarely says anything, just leads by example. They have a goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky who never takes credit for wins, and whose many quirks include not getting any haircuts during the season. They have a coach in Maurice whose claims to fame include overzealous coffee consumption and copious swearing. They did not care who got the credit for anything, because it was a team built for just one thing — winning the Cup, something that required everyone on the roster to do something big at the right time.
That's exactly what happened. And when the Cup was awarded to Barkov, who accepted it as captain, he didn't hand it to Marchand or Tkachuk or Bobrovsky or playoffs MVP Sam Bennett.
He handed it to Nate Schmidt, because Schmidt — who paid for all those Blizzards, by the way — hadn't won a Cup before. And Schmidt handed it to another first-timer, Seth Jones, another late-season trade addition. And so on, and so on, and so on. The last on-ice act of the season was the epitome of what sort of team it was. Backup goalie Vitek Vanecek got to hoist it before most of the regulars; Vanecek, it should be noted, didn't play one second in these playoffs, and the Panthers could not have cared less. He was part of it. He earned his lap with the Cup.
'These men just love one another,' Maurice said. 'That's the only way to explain it.'
There's a parade in a few days, and then free agency is coming. Bennett could be moving on. Marchand might not stay. Ekblad's future is the source of speculation. The salary cap is the salary cap and everybody can't be kept. But it sounds like Florida will try to keep as much of this team together as possible.
'We're going to enjoy this together,' Bobrovsky said. 'And then, we'll go back to work.'
___
AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
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'A well-oiled machine': How the Florida Panthers' team-first mentality led to another Stanley Cup
SUNRISE, Fla. -- Aleksander Barkov hoisted the Stanley Cup, skated with it for a few moments and then handed it to a grinning Nate Schmidt, in his first year with the Florida Panthers and raising hockey's hallowed trophy for the first time. Before any repeat winner touched it, every Panther who never had before got the chance. 'There's a lot of guys they play a ton of minutes that are huge contributors to this group, and they bypassed them and said: 'We had it last year. We'll never not cherish this moment,'' Schmidt said. 'It was amazing.' It also personified the Panthers, who did not have the best player in the final, not facing Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers again. They may not have even had the second-best with Leon Draisaitl there, too, but Florida repeating as champions showed exactly why hockey is the ultimate team sport. 'We just have so much heart, so much talent: Heart meets talent,' said winger Matthew Tkachuk, who played through a sports hernia and torn adductor muscle. 'Our team was a team. When things were getting hard for them, they looked to one guy. But our team, we do it collectively.' The Panthers had 19 non-goalies on the ice over six games against the Oilers; 15 registered a point and 11 scored at least once. Coach Paul Maurice said the team is 'just really deep — unusually so,' making the point that he essentially had three first lines to roll out at any given time. 'A very talented group of guys, so when you bring somebody in, we're going to play you with a really good player,' Maurice said. General manager Bill Zito, who inherited Barkov, defenseman Aaron Ekblad and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, built the rest of the roster to win in the playoffs. With Maurice and his staff in charge, players who were adrift or simply mediocre elsewhere thrived in Florida. 'For the most part, every guy who's come here has had the best season of their careers,' Zito said. 'From that perspective, it's gratifying to think that we can create an environment where the guys can do that, but it's the team. It's that room. It truly is.' Fourth-liner A.J. Greer is one of those players after nearly giving up on his NHL dream a few years ago. He, Zito, Conn Smythe Trophy winner Sam Bennett and so many others use the word 'culture' to explain the Panthers' greatness, and it translates into results on the ice. The forecheck is never-ending, the harassment in the neutral zone relentless — and the offense burgeoning with talent. 'Everyone levels their game up here — every one of us,' Greer said. 'There's a sentiment of greatness but of just like wanting to be as good as you were yesterday.' Tkachuk, acquired by Zito in a trade from Calgary in the same summer of 2022 when Maurice was hired as coach, shook his head when asked about scoring the Cup-clinching goal in Game 6. He wanted to make a point that it doesn't matter who scores. 'I don't care about personal stats,' Tkachuk said. "I don't care. Our team doesn't (care) about that. That's what makes us a team, and that's why we're lifting the Stanley Cup right now because we're a team and not a bunch of individuals.' McDavid, who had seven points in six games in the final, had nothing but praise after a second straight loss to the Panthers on the NHL's biggest stage. 'They're a really good team," McDavid said. 'Very deserving. They were really good.' Florida was in the final for a third consecutive year, and the only loss during this stretch came to Vegas in 2023 when injuries ravaged Tkachuk, Ekblad and others. That was the start of the winning blueprint that has made the Panthers so successful for so long. 'There's a way that we do things here, and it's not easy,' said Bennett, who led all players in the playoffs with 15 goals. 'We don't play an easy style of hockey. It demands a lot of you. Every single guy's bought into it. When some new guys came in, they instantly bought into what we do here and the commitment to being great, to winning. Every single guy just really bought into that.' Schmidt found that out quickly. He played for Maurice in Winnipeg, got bought out last summer and just wanted to get his game back. That happened quickly, and the Stanley Cup was the reward after going through another long grind as a team. 'It's the system. It's the group. It's just completely selfless," Schmidt said. 'Guys just play one way, and they say, 'Hey, this is how we do things' and you've got to jump on board. Guys, once they mold themselves into the game, you just become another cog in the wheel here. That's just the way it runs. It's just a well-oiled machine.'
22 minutes ago
Appreciation: The Panthers set their own path to a 2nd consecutive Stanley Cup
The best team in hockey, again, was a team that did things totally its own way. The Florida Panthers went to Finland early in the season and wore their gifts from that trip — plush robes, a nod to the sauna culture there — to the next few games instead of suits and didn't care how ridiculous that looked. They blared Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al' in the locker room after wins for reasons that nobody fully understood. They not only welcomed a one-time hated rival in Brad Marchand into the fold from Boston at the trade deadline, but they became Blizzard-eating buddies with him on off days during the playoffs. 'This team,' forward Matthew Tkachuk said at one point this season, shaking his head, 'is special.' 'Different,' was the word forward Evan Rodrigues used. 'They are something else,' coach Paul Maurice said. Call them whatever you want. But you have to call them back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, an absolutely absurd development for a franchise that spent most of its first three decades unable to win anything but now simply cannot lose. Final score: Panthers 5, Edmonton 1. Final score of the series: Panthers 4, Oilers 2. The result: Another Cup, and a team that won't be forgotten. 'It's incredible. It's a feeling you can't really describe,' Marchand said. 'Seeing the family and everyone up there and everyone that supported me and helped me get to this point, words can't put this into reality how great it feels. Such an incredible group.' South Florida was a football town when the Miami Dolphins reigned 50 years ago, then became a basketball town when the Miami Heat started winning championships, and it's always been a baseball town because of the area's strong Latino culture. But now, it's a hockey town. The Panthers never had any doubt that they would repeat as Stanley Cup champions. They didn't care what the regular season results were, nor did they care about their seeding, nor did they care that they were going to have to start every playoff series on the road and probably had the most difficult of all possible paths: in-state rival Tampa Bay in Round 1, a now-or-never Toronto team in Round 2, a tough-as-nails Carolina team for the Eastern Conference title, and after all that, Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers were waiting to avenge their loss in last year's Stanley Cup Final. The Lightning were overmatched. The Maple Leafs wore down. The Hurricanes couldn't keep up. And the Oilers, after a year of studying, had even fewer answers for the big test. 'We've got to be a dynasty now,' Tkachuk said. 'It's three years in a row, finals, two championships. This team is so special. Stanley Cup champion. This never gets old.' Everything changed for Florida in July 2022 when general manager Bill Zito shocked everybody by swinging a trade with Calgary for Tkachuk. They went to the final in 2023 and got rolled by Vegas. Back to the final they went in 2024, nearly blowing a 3-0 lead before beating Edmonton for the franchise's first title. This season, there were injuries and suspensions and trades to deal with. But there was no doubt. Maurice said all that mattered was getting into the playoffs healthy. He was right. Tkachuk came back despite a torn adductor in time for Game 1 of the playoffs. Aaron Ekblad was back from a 20-game suspension for taking a banned substance in time for Game 3 of Round 1. The Panthers kept getting stronger and stronger, all the way to the end. They have a player in captain Aleksander Barkov who rarely says anything, just leads by example. They have a goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky who never takes credit for wins, and whose many quirks include not getting any haircuts during the season. They have a coach in Maurice whose claims to fame include overzealous coffee consumption and copious swearing. They did not care who got the credit for anything, because it was a team built for just one thing — winning the Cup, something that required everyone on the roster to do something big at the right time. That's exactly what happened. And when the Cup was awarded to Barkov, who accepted it as captain, he didn't hand it to Marchand or Tkachuk or Bobrovsky or playoffs MVP Sam Bennett. He handed it to Nate Schmidt, because Schmidt — who paid for all those Blizzards, by the way — hadn't won a Cup before. And Schmidt handed it to another first-timer, Seth Jones, another late-season trade addition. And so on, and so on, and so on. The last on-ice act of the season was the epitome of what sort of team it was. Backup goalie Vitek Vanecek got to hoist it before most of the regulars; Vanecek, it should be noted, didn't play one second in these playoffs, and the Panthers could not have cared less. He was part of it. He earned his lap with the Cup. 'These men just love one another,' Maurice said. 'That's the only way to explain it.' There's a parade in a few days, and then free agency is coming. Bennett could be moving on. Marchand might not stay. Ekblad's future is the source of speculation. The salary cap is the salary cap and everybody can't be kept. But it sounds like Florida will try to keep as much of this team together as possible. 'We're going to enjoy this together,' Bobrovsky said. 'And then, we'll go back to work.'
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