How botched travel to Edmonton bonded a Panthers fan and writer during the Stanley Cup Final

The story, as it unfolded, was hard to process.

Two strangers in their late 20s, bonded by the Florida Panthers and travel plans that had gone awry, somehow found themselves on a last-ditch effort to salvage their travel from South Florida to Western Canada for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final and to potentially see hockey history unfold. A 10-hour travel day turned into 22 — including four hours in Ubers and adding two more airports to our itinerary.

We can laugh about it now. It has been more than a week since everything happened. And the Florida Panthers ultimately won that elusive first Stanley Cup, although not on that trip, so it made the excursion and the aftermath that much more memorable.

But looking back, little did either know how this trip would bond two complete strangers.

How it started

The conversation began innocently enough.

As I waited for my delayed flight from Fort Lauderdale to Toronto — the first step to get to Edmonton for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final — I saw a Panthers fan named Jake Levine wearing a Gustav Forsling sweater and talking with a couple other travelers in Panthers garb.

Different circumstances brought us to this moment — Levine and his family are season-ticket holders, I’m wrapping up my first full season covering the team for the Miami Herald — but we were both on our way to hopefully see history.

The Panthers, leading the best-of-7 series 3-2, needed just one more win against the Edmonton Oilers to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history.

About an hour into our three-hour flight, Levine and I both got the notification: Our connecting flight to Edmonton got canceled.

Both of us got rebooked on a new flight from Toronto to Edmonton — one that wouldn’t get us in until 12:30 a.m. Saturday, long after Game 6 would have ended.

Yeah. That wasn’t happening.

The problem: There were almost no flights available to get into Edmonton before the game.

We were sitting a row apart. Our eyes locked immediately.

The first round of emotions kicked in. Panic. Resignation. A little bit of anger.

And then, about an hour and a half into the flight, as we (along with friends and family on the ground and some helpful passengers on our flight) scoured for any flight options that could salvage the trip, Levine gets my attention.

He found something.

An hour-long Uber in the middle of the night from the Toronto airport to Region of Waterloo International Airport.

A 6:15 a.m. flight from Waterloo to Calgary.

A three-hour Uber from Calgary to Edmonton.

The plan was unorthodox — crazy, even — but it was better than nothing. We were already this far into the trek. Why go back? Why miss out on what could be?

Now, let me preface all of this with a caveat: I probably have some of the worst luck when it comes to traveling for work. The running joke on my five seasons covering the Marlins — a self-deprecating coping mechanism, really — was that at least one of my flights would get delayed on every trip. More often than not, it became reality.

A couple examples:

In 2019, I had a flight canceled in New York, had to stay an extra night (never a bad thing) and then take four flights (with the final connection in Tampa!) to get back to Fort Lauderdale.

After the first road trip of the 2023 season, my flight from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale got canceled (granted, the Fort Lauderdale airport was practically under water) so I ended up flying from Philly to New Orleans to Miami and then taking the Tri-Rail to Fort Lauderdale to get my car from the airport garage.

I missed out on Game 3 of the Cup Final — the only Panthers game I didn’t cover in person during the playoffs — because of bad weather in South Florida.

It makes me wonder what I did in a past life to have this type of bad karma with the travel gods.

This trip, though, is the leader in the clubhouse now.

But every time a disruption in my itinerary occurs, it brings me back to that cliche Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

The latest journey was certainly one for the memories.

How it went

We landed in Toronto around 11 p.m., got through customs and managed to kill two hours and decompress a bit before heading to Waterloo.

The airport is tiny, with just six gates in the terminal. We arrived at 2:15 a.m. and still had two hours before security opened and four hours until our flight. I wrote a Matthew Tkachuk story. He tried to get some sleep.

We said a few words to each other here and there at Waterloo, conversed a bit about what the Panthers needed to do to wrap up the series (in essence, start strong, Sergei Bobrovsky return to form, the stars — particularly the top line of Carter Verhaeghe, Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart — find another gear), but other than that it was mostly silence as the overnight adrenaline began to ween.

And then we boarded the WestJet flight to Calgary, and the juices began flowing again. A little more than four hours in the air without a hitch.

With another leg completed, the optimism rose. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, us running on fumes (plus a kick of Tim Hortons coffee for me) after we should have been in Edmonton hours and hours earlier, but we couldn’t help but soak in the fact that, finally, we were almost there.

We got into Edmonton around noon local time after a three-hour Uber from Calgary.

Levine barely spoke during the ride. I wrote half of this story on my phone during the trek. We went our separate ways as we got dropped off at our hotels.

When we each made it Rogers Place for the game — him sitting near the glass, me in the press box — the optimism from finally completing our journey carried into the arena.

The Panthers are getting this done.

And then the puck dropped.

And Florida got crushed 5-1.

And like that, we were heading back to Sunrise not for a celebration, but for a winner-take-all Game 7 that felt unfathomable even a few days earlier.

“We went through hell for this...” Levine texted afterward.

Barely 17 hours after getting into Edmonton, I was on my way back to South Florida with another lovely 12-hour travel day — Edmonton to Vancouver to Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale.

(Folks, if you haven’t gotten the message already, don’t try traveling to Edmonton from Florida; it’s not fun.)

After a day of sleep, it was back to Amerant Bank Arena for Game 7 on Monday. Optimism shifted to nerves. A series the Panthers had completely in their hands appeared to have slipped away. The final blow felt inevitable.

We are at our spots. Him in seats by the glass. Me in the press box.

The score was tied after one period. Things were still tense. Florida went up 2-1 after the second period on a Sam Reinhart goal.

“OK,” I told myself. “This could be happening.”

And then the Panthers stayed true to their typical brand of lockdown defense in the third to hold off the Oilers.

The Panthers win 2-1.

The Panthers are Stanley Cup champions.

After I get back up to the press box, I send Levine a text.

“They. Did. It.”

“We did it,” Levine responds.

How it’s going

Ever since the game ended Monday, Levine and I have been living up the Stanley Cup championship experience in our own ways.

I’ve finished chronicling the journey. He has celebrated almost as non-stop as the team has — even meeting up with them at the Elbo Room in Fort Lauderdale. He’s called the past week “a dream.”

Which, considering the nightmare we went through, the dream is well worth it.

The waves of emotions — from dejection to hope to numbness to jubilation (for him) and relief (for me) — are something neither of us will forget. It’s a story we’ll be able to tell time and again. It’ll never get old.

Now, can the next journey be a little less hectic, please?