Cote: Panthers crush Edmonton, McDavid, make history with 2nd straight Stanley Cup | Opinion
The most weirdly glorious tradition in all of sports told you all you needed to know late Tuesday night as hundreds of plastic and rubber toy black rats rained down as if heaven sent and peppered the sheet of ice — the perfect visual counterpart to the merry bedlam of sonic noise in the building.
The Stanley Cup trophy was in the Sunrise rink for this Stanley Cup Final Game 6.
And it wasn’t going anywhere.
It’s staying right where it belongs.
The Florida Panthers retained the Cup with decisive domination in a 5-1 triumph over the Edmonton Oilers for a 4-2 series win and a second consecutive NHL championship to cap a third straight year in hockey’s Final. Sam Reinhart’s four goals led the way in the game. Sam Bennett won the Conn Smythe trophy as playoffs MVP after leading the postseason in goals.
“I don’t plan on getting too much sleep tonight,” said Bennett afterward on the ice.
The official championship parade and celebration is planned for Sunday along Fort Lauderdale beach. But it won’t wait for that. Hundreds of Panthers fans already were gathered outside the nearby iconic Elbo Room by early Wednesday morning. Team captain Aleksander Barkov, wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt, stepped out of an unmarked police car and hoisted the Cup as fans cheered.
Bennett reflected later on what consecutive titles took.
“It’s the culture here. It’s not easy. There a lot demanded of you here,” he said. “The commitment to being great, to winning. It’s a huge honor to be a part of this. I love being here and I love this. I always knew I could be more than I was. My whole life switched when I got to here.”
Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, normally outwardly stoic, almost sullen-seeming, raised his two fists in the air minutes after the game ended and flashed a wide, toothy grin rarely seen.
That the once-downtrodden Panthers are a budding NHL dynasty sounded less and less like hyperbole and more like hockey’s new reality long before the rubber rats started flying. Betting odds for next season already have Florida a co-favorite for a three-peat.
“Exactly where you want to be and dream about since you’re a little kid,” Barkov had said of what this night meant. “We’re living the dream.”
In the on-ice Stanley Cup ceremony afterward Barkov carried his young son in the crook of an arm, the toddler wearing a hockey sweater that read, BARKY JR.
Most fans stayed to watch and cheer the on-ice scene and Cup raising. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman drew cheers when he said, “You fans prove that hockey thrives in the sunshine!”
Of course it was a second straight Final won against Edmonton and superstar Connor McDavid, widely said to be the greatest player in the sport but once again denied his long-elusive first Stanley Cup.
I have written and said for two years that McDavid should not be called “McJesus” or the next Gretzky or given G.O.A.T. status because he remains a king without a crown. The Panthers again have verified my claim, and served to underline my admittedly harsh nickname for McDavid.
McOverrated.
He might be the best player in hockey, but he was not best player in this series, or even on his team, or good enough to elevate his team to be the best, either. In the six Final games, he managed but one goal and five assists. McJesus was not walking on (ice) water. He was mostly invisible, made so partly because of Barkov’s defense against him.
McDavid failed to help win this Cup, but didn’t lose it, either.
The Panthers won it. Richly earned it.
Florida’s four-line depth flexed and preened in the Final, a deep, expertly constructed roster, a team, burying the Oilers’ individual starpower. This is a Cats squad with the Conn Smythe winner, Bennett, on the second line. With a guy who might have won kit, Brad Marchand, on the third.
“I truly don’t think we win this Stanley Cup without [Marchand],” said Bennett of the late season add who came in a steal of a trade with Boston.
“Our roster’s really deep,” said Maurice. “Unusually so.”
A roster with as much desire as depth.
Said Tkachuk before Game 6: “No secret, the Cup’s in the building. We know the desperation they’ll come out with with their backs to the wall. We have to match that desperation. McDavid is desperate to win a Cup. But so are we!”
Florida’s double dream come true at McDavid’s expense has lifted the Panthers to the rarest of echelons in the history of major South Florida sports:
The Miami Dolphins in 1972-73. The Miami Heat in 2012-13. And now the 2024-25 Panthers, newly minted and crowned.
That’s it. The only three times in Greater Miami’s history we have celebrated back to back champions.
Don Shula, then Erik Spoelstra and now Paul Maurice are the only coaches to have been maestros to it.
Maurice toiled a quarter century in relative obscurity with several other clubs before getting a phone call from Panthers general manager Bill Zito four years ago that changed his life.
“I wouldn’t say I was proud of my career but I had managed how I viewed it,” Maurice said past midnight, of his pre-Panthers years. “Then Bill Zito called. It’s actually not the Stanley Cups. Watching these guys interact with each other has been the gift of this. It was somewhat life-altering this year to watch the way they treat each other.”
As an example of that Panthers’ culture and camaraderie, a special point was made Tuesday night to allow the handful of first-year Cats who’d never won a Cup before to be the first to hoist the prized silver chalice. The huge trophy weighs 34 1/2 pounds. The champions who lift it always make it seem a feather.
“Those are the small insights for people into this group. [The trophy] doesn’t go captain to captain to captain to Sam Reinhart who scored four,” Maurice said. “The awareness of each other ... that was something special. The first ones to touch it were the ones who’d never won it before. There’s no pecking order.”
One player, Tomas Nosek, broke down on the ice afterward when he and Maurice embraced. Earlier in the Final the fourth-line player had had a costly penalty that led to an Oilers power play goal in a Florida loss, and Maurice had publicly and privately supported him as his teammates rallied ‘round him.
“That was very special,” said the coach of that moment of Nosek’s emotion. “That’s one I’ll never forget.”
The Panthers went through much physically to finish as the healthier team in the Final. Tachuck in the midseason 4 Nations Face-Off tournament tore the hip abductor muscle of the bone and also had a hernia. “Medical term was, ‘He’s a mess,’” said Maurice. “I was not hopeful at the start he would survive the first round.” Reinhart had a grade 2 MCL knee sprain during the Carolina series. Early in the Edmonton series Barkov split open a palm and needed 13 stitches. The sutures tore out, twice, and they ended up gluing his palm together.
“All the bad days ... this makes it all worth it,” Tkachuck said on the ice afterward. “This is insane. It’s why you play the game. I’m so lucky.”
Climbing to that second championship was a steep and bumpy ride. In the regular season the Panthers were only third-best in their division, fifth in the conference and 11th league-wide. Not in any of the four playoff rounds did they enjoy home-ice advantage.
“A lot of moments that were difficult. Lots of ups and downs,” said Bennett of the season. “It felt like a long year. The Tolronto series being down two. But there’s so much belief in this lockerroom. So much experience. You need that belief. I love being here and I love this team.”
The Panthers were nothing special at home this postseason, only 5-4 in Sunrise entering Tuesday compared to 10-3 on the road. But they were fabulous on home ice exactly when they needed to be. When everything mattered. When a loss would have forced a Game 7 in Edmonton.
Florida led for the fifth straight game this series when Reinhart single-handedly made it 1-0 Tuesday on the Cats’ first shot on goal 4:36 into the game. He won the puck from Evan Bouchard and had a quick skate to the Oilers goal and a snap shot high into it as he lost his balance.
Matthew Tkachuck made it 2-0, ultimately the winning goal, just 46 seconds before the first period ended as his left-handed wrist shot finished passes from Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell. (The Panthers scored at least twice in every first period this series.)
The lead held early in the second when a Bobrovsky stop on a Corey Perry shot brought out the “Bob-by” chants.
The chant would bloom again a few minutes later.
Florida made it 3-0 with 2:29 left in the second period to further uncork the celebrating. Reinhart’s second goal of the night and ninth of the playoffs did it on assists from Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe.
The “We want the Cup!” chants were ringing down before the third period was half done.
Reinhart’s hat-trick goal made it 4-0 with 6:34 to play, and his fourth came soon after, both empty netters mirroring Edmonton’s desperation.
The Oilers averted the shutout with what amounted to an uncelebrated pity-goal in the closing minutes.
The Panthers are the league’s first back-to-back champs since Tampa Bay in 2020-21 and only the third since 1997-98. No hockey team has reached more than three consecutive Finals since the New York Islanders’ five in a row from 1980 to 1984.
Recall the Panthers led Edmonton 3-0 in the Final last year but the Oilers clawed back with three straight wins to force a Game 7 that the Cats won, 2-1
Maurice was asked after Tuesday’s morning skate how it feels to wake up knowing he could win the Stanley Cup?
“You asked me that four times last year!” he kidded.
They needed only one elimination game to end this year’s Final.
The Panthers must re-sign three major free agents this coming offseason in Bennett, Brad Marchand and Aaron Ekblad as attention turns to a three-peat.
But that’s for later.
Celebrate this now.
The Florida Panthers, budding dynasty, have blossomed into South Florida’s major-sport flagship franchise for excellence right now, for memories freshly made.
Are the Cats now this market’s biggest team or hockey the biggest game in town? No.
But the Panthers are the state of the art now and over the past four years for relentless winning, a title the Miami Heat had claimed for years.
Bennett, Mr. Conn Smythe, had said after Tuesday’s morning skate, “Honestly this feels like just another day this morning.”
It didn’t feel just just another night.
It felt like history had been made.
This story was originally published June 17, 2025 at 10:54 PM.
