Cote: Panthers 1 of 4 South Florida dynasties -- & 1 of 3 that loves the hate | Opinion
Dynasty! Dynasty? What does the word even mean in sports? Ask me and I will tell you I know one when I see one, especially when surrounded by one. Like right now.
Like the Florida Panthers celebrating a second straight Stanley Cup championship on Sunday with a parade along A1A and then from a stage set up right on the sands of Fort Lauderdale beach — right across from the boozy Elbo Room and a slap-shot from the Atlantic Ocean.
Like a quarter of a million hockey fans turning out to bear witness and to celebrate this season, this team, and what this franchise has become ... from one that made the playoffs only twice between 2000 and 2020 to one on top of the world.
Fans were 20-deep lining A1A, they formed a multitude a football field long in front of the stage, the watched from boats and jets-skis, and they stood on balconies of beachside hotels.
The rain stayed away this year.
The fans were celebrating the reign.
“We’re living the dream,” captain Aleksander Barkov said.
“These are moments you think about your whole life,” Sam Bennett said.
The fans living all of that, too, were cheering something beyond this pinnacle on Sunday. They were cheering for what’s still ahead. For possibilities.
Dynasty, yes. A baby one, a budding one, but one that might be just getting started.
It was not a usual Sunday for America, with U.S. bombs dropping on Iran, or in South Florida sports, with the Heat losing out (again) on signing Kevin Durant. But for Panthers fans, for a few hours, all that mattered was celebrating.
The D-word is out there, and the Cats embrace it.
You saw several red “Rat Dynasty” T-shirts authorized by the NHLPA dotting the massive crowd.
The back-to-back Cats are not content.
“I don’t see it slowing down,” says Barkov. “We have another step to take. Let’s do it again.”
“We’re still on an upward trajectory, said Aaron Ekblad, not sounding like a man thinking of leaving. “It’s an elite program. The best organization in the league. It’s incredible. It’s everything you’ve worked for forever.”
Matthew Tkachuk: “You can officially call us a dynasty or close to it, so hopefully we can keep building. I want to get used to this whole winning thing. It’s addictive. Winning the Cup last year changed South Florida. Now hockey has taken on a life of its own down here.”
Said club president Matt Caldwell to Sunday’s crowd: “Who wants a third Cup?”
Sports dynasties have changed. The increased number of teams and onset of free-agency means we’ll no longer see prolonged dynasties like the New York Yankees of the 1950s or the Boston Celtics in the ‘60s. The modern dynasty defines as at least a couple of championships in a sustained run of winning, and the Panthers by that measure are in the midst of what I would call only the fourth legit-dynasty in South Florida’s long history in major sports.
That rarest of lists:
▪ Miami Dolphins, 1971-74: Those Dolphins, born in 1966 and just out of the expansion era, made three straight Super Bowl appearances and had consecutive SB wins in 1972-73, the first of those the still-singular Perfect Season. Don Shula led a four-year won-lost record of 47-8-1, a success Dolfans have longed for more than 50 years to experience once again.
▪ Miami Hurricanes, 1986-92: Jimmy Johnson and then Dennis Erickson oversaw a seven-year run of excellence that was bookended by two Heisman Trophies and included national championships in 1987, ‘89 and ‘91; five straight major bowl wins; a combined record of 78-6; and the bulk of a record 58-game home winning streak.
▪ Miami Heat, 2010-14: LeBron James and Chris Bosh joining forces with Dwyane Wade led to four straight NBA Finals and consecutive championships in 2012 and ‘13. The four-year record of 224-88 was the best in basketball before the Big 3 era fractured and dissolved too soon, leaving a trail of what-ifs for the longer dynasty that never was.
▪ Florida Panthers, 2021-???: In the past four NHL seasons the Panthers have won a Presidents’ Trophy for league-best record, then followed that with three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals since the arrival of coach Paul Maurice and winning the past two in a row -- the latest one celebrated Sunday. Cats have totaled 422 standings points in those four years, or .644 of the maximum.
There is an even more exclusive club: Greater Miami sports dynasties that embraced being hated outside of South Florida.
Those early Dolphins champs did not foster such ill-will. But Hurricanes surely football did in those days. The Big 3 Heat absolutely did, drawing boos everywhere.
And the Panthers not only embrace that reputation but seem to encourage it, represented by Sam Bennett’s remarks at Sunday’s Stanley Cup celebration. To the multitudes on the beach -- and to the NHL and hockey fans everywhere -- he said: “A lot of people, they don’t like the way we play. They call us dirty. They call us nasty. They call us bullies. So I would like to take this time to apologize ... to absolutely [bleeping] no one. We’re the double champions. We do what the [bleep] we want. Let’s go!”
The Panthers, liking fit and feel of that black hat, now chase the rarity that elevates you to a whole different historic level: the three-peat.
The last time that has happened in the traditional Big 4 American sports: the Lakers winning the NBA Finals in 2000-02, the Yankees winning the World Series in 1998-2000, the Islanders winning the Stanley Cup Final in 1980-83, and the Packers winning the NFL championship/Super Bowl in 1965-67.
Since those occurrences 17 teams have won two straight and then failed at the three-peat.
The Panthers’ budding, in-progress dynasty would begin early in the 2021-22 season, and it would begin with a major scandal.
Eight games into his third season, after a 7-0 start, coach Joel Quenneville, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, had little choice but to resign (or be fired) over an unearthed 10-year-old scandal from when he was head coach in Chicago. The mess involved him mishandling a sexual abuse allegation brought by a former player against a team video coach.
Andrew Brunette became interim coach and led Florida to the Presidents’ Trophy for the best regular season record and was among three coach-of-the-year finalists (though he did not win), but the Cats then were swept by rival Tampa Bay in the second round of the playoffs.
General manager Bill Zito chose to not promote Brunette to full-time coach and instead hired Paul Maurice, who in a journeyman 24-year NHL head-coaching career before Florida had a 816-861-99 career record with zero championships.
The Miami Herald headline on my column of June 22, 2022, read, ‘Florida Panthers swap coach of year finalist for guy No. 1 in career losses.’
It was not inaccurate. My column’s first paragraph was, “The Florida Panthers’ latest in a franchise merry-go-round of coaching changes will register as a dubious decision until the new guy proves it was the right one.”
The new proved it was the right one, to put it mildly.
My skepticism proved unfounded. Zito aced the hire, and Maurice was the right guy for the right reasons as Zito sought a complete re-tooling of the Panthers philosophy from one of full-out offensive emphasis to a tougher, defense-first style more suited to playoff hockey.
Sunday’s celebration over a second straight Stanley Cup is the irrefutable proof Zito was right to boldly change what had just won a Presidents’ Trophy — to fix what didn’t seem broken but was — and hire Maurice to shepherd that transformation.
A major South Florida pro team had not seen such an abrupt and complete change in playing style and philosophy since Shula transformed the Dolphins from a Larry Csonka-led ground-first team that won two Super Bowls to a complete air-first blitzkrieg that broke NFL passing records after Dan Marino was drafted.
Momentum for the continued dynasty of hockey-in-the-heat only grew Thursday night in the unlikeliest of places: Popular Miami nightspot E11even. That’s where Panthers players continued their week-long celebration — Cats also lead the NHL in celebrating — as Conn Smythe playoffs MVP and pending free agent Sam Bennett took the mic as the crowd hushed.
“I ain’t [bleepin’] leaving!” he announced as fans erupted in cheers.
Bennett, first-year hero Brad Marchand and career-long Panther Aaron Ekblad are the three most important pieces Florida will try to re-sign. If Bennett’s perhaps boozy declaration is to be believed, that’s a great start. Ekblad at the same event thanked the fans for all the years support; a goodbye, perhaps? Marchand, at 37, has likely proved more valuable here than elsewhere, and has done nothing but rave about the welcoming culture and how much he loves this team.
Zito has done everything right the past four years in masterfully constructing a roster for the coach-maestro Maurice, highlighted by the trade for Matthew Tkachuk and the strategic onboarding of Marchand, and now has been gifted three priority free agents who all seem to want to stay -- with money perhaps not the top priority amid the lingering perfume of a second straight championship.
The club-owning Viola family, Zito and Maurice have lifted a once-downtrodden franchise to one not only winning everything but firmly established, and rising, as a major force in a crowded South Florida sports market. Sunday’s celebration turnout was massive.
“We came in during Covid, so it was a little strange,” recalls Zito. “It was, you made the playoffs — exciting! Then it was important to win a round. Oh my goodness. Hugs. It’s channeled differently now. It creates appreciation and hunger. You want to do it again. Don’t stop. Don’t get content. It’s not over. Don’t let success get in your way.”
This kind of success, the ultimate winning, lifting the Cup, is the best talent recruiter out there, the only one maybe bigger than money, and Florida is the only team on ice that has that now. This is the new model, the envy of all others.
It’s another reason the dynasty talk is not crazy.
It is the very reason a championship team got better this year, with key adds like Marchand and Seth Jones.
And it is the very reason this championship team might improve yet again as the audacious idea of three in a row begins to slowly bloom into possibility.
This story was originally published June 22, 2025 at 11:39 AM.
