FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Stanley Cup is a little banged up, thanks to the Florida Panthers’ celebration of back-to-back titles.
The bowl of the famous trophy is cracked and the bottom is dented. Not for the first time and likely not the last.
The Panthers won their second consecutive championship on home ice Tuesday night, beating the Edmonton Oilers in six games. The team, following decades of tradition, partied with the Cup into the wee hours and kept the revelry going in Fort Lauderdale well into Wednesday afternoon.
A spokesperson for the Hockey Hall of Fame said the keepers of the Cup are taking the appropriate steps and plan to have it repaired by the celebration parade on Sunday. Made of silver and a nickel alloy, the 37-pound Cup is relatively malleable.
Damage is nothing new for the 131-year-old silver chalice that has been submerged in pools and the Atlantic Ocean and mishandled by players, coaches and staff for more than a century. Just this decade alone, the Tampa Bay Lightning dropped the Cup during their boat parade in 2021 and the Colorado Avalanche dented it on the ice the night they won the following year.
After the Panthers closed out the Oilers Tuesday, Aleksander Barkov hoisted the Cup, skated with it for a few moments and then handed it to a grinning Nate Schmidt, in his first year with the 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.”
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.
“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.”
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