Celebrate! Florida Panthers capture biggest prey of all with first Stanley Cup
SUNRISE — Time to Hunt?
Nah.
Time to celebrate!
But first, let’s all exhale, why don’t we?
The Florida Panthers rule the hockey world after finally defeating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 Monday night to capture their greatest prey — the Stanley Cup — for the first time.
It took four tries to conquer the Oilers in closeout games, but who’s counting?
A team whose season theme was “Time to Hunt: Redemption” achieved just that after coming up just short in last year’s Stanley Cup Final. As the final seconds of Game 7 of this Stanley Cup Final expired, relief mixed with delirium as players tossed sticks, hurdled the boards and stormed the ice for a team hug in a boisterous and relieved Amerant Bank Arena.
Rats? Of course there were rats, flung by fans who’d waited most of the franchise’s 30 seasons for such an occasion. Dozens flew. Then hundreds.
Panthers players were then ready to take turns skating around the ice holding the massive Cup aloft. Aleksander Barkov handed the Cup to goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who in the crowd's eyes should have won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP instead of Edmonton's Connor McDavid. One by one, the rest of the Panthers took turns skating with the Cup overhead.
The scene they had dreamed of since first lacing up skates wasn’t a dream at all.
"It’s not a dream anymore," forward Matthew Tkachuk said. "It’s reality. I can’t believe it."
It was the realization that all their names will be etched into Lord Stanley’s Cup forevermore.
Panthers join other three teams as champions
It was the realization that they joined their Miami Heat neighbors, their Miami Marlins neighbors and their Miami Dolphins neighbors in giving South Florida sports fans the ultimate gift.
A championship.
Not to mention, they avoided the infamy of being the first team in 82 years to lose the Stanley Cup Final after taking a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
History instead will show that Sam Reinhart, the Panthers’ leading scorer this season, appropriately scored the Cup-winning goal at 15:11 of the second period. Carter Verhaeghe, who like Reinhart had been quiet, scored Florida’s first goal after just 4:27 had elapsed in the game. With that, a statement: The Panthers team showing up Monday night was the same one that won the first three games of the series, not the lethargic one that lost the next three.
All that remains is another parade, perhaps up A1A and along Fort Lauderdale Beach.
The Florida Panthers, who play on the edge of the Everglades, whose players leave practice in shorts and flip-flops, no longer are unique for their quaint tradition with plastic rodents.
They’re unique because they’re the best.
And while we’re boasting, we might as well toss a bouquet to the state of Florida as a whole. Nowhere (sorry, Canada) is ice hockey played at the level it is in the Sunshine State. Put the Panthers and rival Tampa Bay Lightning together and you have three of the past five Stanley Cup winners, not to mention runners-up in those two other seasons.
More: No love lost: Tampa Bay Lightning fans pulling for Oilers to top Panthers in Stanley Cup Final
In the years to follow, stories will be told about the heroes of this championship effort. Certainly it never would have happened if not for 35-year-old Bobrovsky, the Russian who had home crowds chanting his name even before puck drop. Fans expected him to continue his postseason hot streak of stonewalling high-scoring stars including the Bruins’ David Pastrnak, the Rangers’ Artemi Panarin and the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and McDavid. Although Bobrovsky experienced a bobble in Games 4, 5 and 6, he reverted back to form Monday night.
Slightly more than a year ago, Bobrovsky was the Panthers’ backup goaltender early in the postseason, not their backbone. That changed, however, joining a series of vital decisions made high up the chain of command that allowed this franchise to get where it is.
Key moves: Viola hires Zito, Zito calls on Maurice
Start with team owner Vincent Viola, who took a shot by naming Bill Zito general manager in 2020. Zito once served as GM of an AHL team called the “Monsters” but had never been GM on the NHL level up to that point.
The boldest move was still to come. Even though interim coach Andrew Brunette led the 2021-22 Panthers to a club-record 122 points and the Presidents’ Trophy, Zito wanted to make a change.
He wanted veteran coach Paul Maurice.
He also wanted Paul Maurice to answer his phone.
Having resigned from the Winnipeg Jets, Maurice was enjoying “four phenomenal days of fishing,” he said.
“This is absolute truth. My phone rings and it’s the number I don’t know,” Maurice said. “So I never answer that. And then I get a text from somebody that says, ‘Answer your phone.’ ”
Zito and Maurice are on speaking terms now.
“I want to hug him,” Zito said on the eve of the Final.
Hockey announcers never missed the chance to point out that Maurice, 57, had won more games than any other NHL coach who had never won the big one. It’s a cheap, demeaning label that, as Dan Marino could tell you, ought to be put to rest.
Maurice didn’t take the easy way out. He didn’t downplay how desperately he wanted to lose that title even though many coaches in his place would.
“Every coach is different,” he said. “And it seems to me, as you age, you get a different perspective on life and what’s important and valuable.
“I need to win one. No, it’s not going to change me. It’s not going to change the section of my life that’s not related to hockey at all.
“Yeah, that’s just the truth. That’s how I feel, 30 years into this thing. Wouldn’t mind winning one.”
Monday night, Maurice didn’t mind win No. 939, embracing his coaching staff, one by one, as the party broke out on the ice.
Maurice arrived with big ideas on how to reach this point, none more vital than inheriting the league’s highest-scoring team and getting it to focus on defense. He wanted to grind out wins and wear teams down to exhaustion by the third period.
And play playoff-style hockey all season long. The goals? Maurice knew that with the talent he had, the goals would come.
Did players buy in?
“Great, great coach, but at the same time a great human being,” Barkov said.
“Best coach I’ve ever had,” Tkachuk said.
More: Five Reasons why Florida Panthers can win the Stanley Cup championship as playoffs near
Zito put the word “Monster” in a different light in July 2022 when he swung the gargantuan trade that brought Tkachuk from Calgary. He added Reinhart, Verhaeghe and Gustav Forsling, whose previous teams would now appreciate transactional mulligans. After injuries caught up with the Panthers in last year’s Final against Las Vegas, Zito added defensemen Dmitry Kulikov, Niko Mikkola and Oliver Ekman-Larsson to make this as deep a team as there is. Then, in July, he signed Evan Rodrigues, who caught fire with four goals against Edmonton.
It's time for Dolphins to keep pace
And just like that, a franchise born in 1993 had rekindled the magic of its infancy. Those Panthers set records for expansion success and reached the Stanley Cup Final in their third season. Then, all that was good went bad: not a single playoff series win until 2022. If you want to know how Amerant Bank Arena could get as loud as it did Monday night, imagine pressure building in a bottle of champagne for that long, then somebody popping the cork.
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That’s the kind of onus that now falls on, of all our teams, the Dolphins. The Marlins won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. The Heat won the NBA title in 2005-06, 2011-12 and 2012-13. As for the Dolphins, it’s not just that their Super Bowl titles came in the 1972 and ’73 seasons — before any of the other teams existed. No, it’s that they haven’t won a single playoff game since all of their three neighbors won championships. Even current Dolphins who weren’t even born at the time are tired of hearing about the drought.
Panthers players aren’t going to hear anything of the sort. Not after Monday night (and, let’s be honest here, deep into Tuesday morning).
The Hunt is over.
Let the celebrations begin.
Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at hhabib@pbpost.com. Follow him on social media @gunnerhal. Click here to subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Stanley Cup: Florida Panthers join Dolphins, Heat, Marlins as champions
