After 17 NHL seasons, Kyle Okposo’ first Stanley Cup is a full-circle moment with Panthers

Kyle Okposo’s first real memory of the Stanley Cup, perhaps fittingly, was in 1996. He was 8 years old at the time, and his parents let him stay up to watch the entirety of the Colorado Avalanche’s triple-overtime win against the Florida Panthers to secure a four-game sweep in the Stanley Cup Final.

“I watched that whole run, and that’s when I really fell in love with the game,” Okposo said. “I had watched and played for a couple years, but during that run is when I truly fell in love with hockey. That was the first time where I saw people lift the trophy.

Okposo, now 36, at the time couldn’t comprehend the emotions that went through winning the Stanley Cup. That’s understandable. He was just a youngster.

“But when you watch people lift it for 27 years,” Okposo said, “you can kind of get a pretty good sense of what the emotion is like when those men lift that cup after what they put themselves through to get there.”

In a bit of full-circle fate, Okposo’s finally got to feel those same emotions. After 17 seasons and 1,051 career regular-season games, Okposo won his first Stanley Cup on Monday with that same Panthers franchise that he saw get swept in 1996 when his love for the sport and that trophy come to life.

He became the 20th player in NHL history to play more than 1,000 regular-season games before winning his first Cup.

“Just pure jubilation,” Okposo said. “You put 30 years into this to try to hoist that trophy. All the hard work, all the skates, everything, it was just pretty special to finally get it done.”

Okposo joined the Panthers at the trade deadline, requesting to be sent from the Buffalo Sabres to Florida knowing full well this might be his last chance to contend for a Stanley Cup. Okposo had not been to the playoffs since 2016 and the Sabres were already out of playoff contention.

He didn’t need to be a major player in the playoff run — Okposo said multiple times he just wanted to be “a spoke in the wheel” — but he wanted a chance to experience that glory.

“This year, I wanted to make sure that I was going to put myself in a position, no matter what, to play in the playoffs and compete for a Stanley Cup,” Okposo said. “I wasn’t going to compromise in that goal. It was a difficult decision for me to do, but I felt like Florida was going to give me the best chance to reach the ultimate goal.”

His role changed from being a captain in Buffalo to having to compete just to get on the ice on any given day, but he was fine with that.

It also helped that the team welcomed him with open arms from Day 1.

When the Panthers won the Eastern Conference final, captain Aleksander Barkov made sure Okposo was as close as possible to the Prince of Wales trophy.

When they won the Stanley Cup, he was the third on the team to take the solo lap around the ice, following Barkov and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky.

“He’s had a long career,” Bobrovsky said. “He’s been fighting and waiting for this moment all his life.”

Even before the Stanley Cup win, Okposo had already put his career into perspective. Playing in the NHL for 17 seasons gives one time to think about the journey. He appreciated the challenges that have come his way — both professionally and personally — and has learned how to compartmentalize all of his goals.

“A lot,” Okposo said. “I mean, I think when you become pro, you understand how difficult it is to play 82 games and what that’s like mentally and physically and how to deal with that. And then, once you kind of figure that out in a sense, then all of a sudden your family and then you have to balance more buckets. And you’ve got to figure out your life and how to stay in it mentally. And then playing in the playoffs is a completely different animal. You kind of have to go through that to understand what that’s like. You learn a lot.”

All of that learning, all of that persevering, has paid off with a Stanley Cup.