Brotherhood and experience: How the Florida Panthers finally won a Stanley Cup

Matthew Tkachuk, like so many of his teammates, was having trouble putting the situation into words. The Florida Panthers had finally won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history, beating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday after nearly blowing a series in which they took a 3-0 lead.

The Panthers acquired Tkachuk two summers ago in a blockbuster trade with the Calgary Flames for exactly this reason.

Now that it happened, it was hard to process in the immediate aftermath amid the euphoria and celebration with teammates, friends and family on the ice.

“I don’t think we realize what we’ve accomplished yet,” Tkachuk said. “Every time I look at that trophy, it’ll get better and better.”

This Stanley Cup championship has been a moment long in the making for the Panthers. How long exactly depends on who you ask or what perspective you’re trying to prioritize.

For the franchise as a whole? Thirty-one years and 30 seasons (there was no 2004-2005 season due to the lockout).

For coach Paul Maurice? Three decades and 26 NHL seasons.

For Aleksander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad, the elder statesmen of the franchise? Eleven and 10 seasons, respectively.

But for this team, the singular unit? It all began on Sept. 21 when they stepped onto the ice at the IceDen in Coral Springs for the first day of training camp. They were just three months removed from the sting of losing in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final to the Vegas Golden Knights. They didn’t want to feel that disappointment again.

“We’re just going to be hungrier this year,” Barkov said then. “We know what we did and how we did and it’s possible [to make another run] with the way we do it. All we’ve got to do is just be a little better.”

And they got better. The roster had more depth. The players were another year wiser. And now, the core had been battle-tested. They were cognizant of what needed to be done and how they needed to do it.

They did it together, as one team — anything individual was secondary in thought.

“Brotherhood,” Barkov said. “We love each other here. We come every single day to the rink and know we’re going to have the best time of the day. Working really hard at practices, games, whatever it is. You come here and you see every single guy sitting next to you is going to work really hard.”

Added Tkachuk: “You can’t teach experience. You can watch as much video as you want. You can to talk to as many people. You’ve got to go through it. We went through it last year and I think we gained a lot from it. This year, we came ready to go — and now we’re champs.”

The experience of Florida’s core has been pivotal. Over the past two seasons, the group has played 210 games. They bonded and pushed each other over the extended playoff runs.

“They are the fabric, they are the core, they are the identity,” Maurice said. “Their personalities are the room. The distance this franchise has covered over three or four years is based on the distance their games have covered, the leadership that they have shown and then grown into. They are the reason that we’re here.”

But how the core was built starts at the top and the four-year building process that president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito orchestrated.

Only four players on Florida’s roster — Barkov, Ekblad, goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and forward Eetu Luostarinen — are holdovers from before Zito’s arrival.

He made big splashes, namely with the Tkachuk signing. He found diamonds in the rough — defenseman Gustav Forsling and forward Carter Verhaeghe come to mind. He acquired former first-round picks like Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart who hadn’t hit their stride and watched them flourish after a change of scenery.

This past offseason, Zito signed nine players to fill roster voids and then made a pair of trades to get veteran forwards Vladimir Tarasenko and Kyle Okposo at the trade deadline to put the final touches on a championship roster.

“It starts with Billy, it trickles down to Paul and then the guys take over from there,” Panthers fourth-line forward Ryan Lomberg said. “Those guys are incredible leaders and they’re the ones who set the tone. People think it’s the players. It’s not. It comes from our coaches and management. They’re the ones who set the foundation, and then they let us take it over. That’s what it did. We’ve got so many incredible leaders, so many incredible characters, and that’s another shout out to Billy for bringing all these people in, but it takes a tremendous amount of character to accomplish something like this, and we’re just blessed that we have it in that room.”

And even as players come and go — Maurice made sure to mention the importance of players from last year’s Cup Final run that were no longer on the team like Radko Gudas, Eric and Marc Staal and Alex Lyon to helping “start the upward trajectory” — the unity inside the dressing room remains a constant.

“You’ve got to bring in the right people,” Maurice said. “You’ve got to have the right captain. How do I explain it to you? Okposo and Tarasenko — if you walked in the room, you would have thought they’ve played for us for 10 years, and it’s true. I had Anton Lundell tell me that last year. I said ‘What’s your favorite part about playing here?’ He said ‘I walked in the room the first day and they made me feel like I was part of the team.’ They did that for me, too — the new guy, old guy who couldn’t win.”

Bennett added: “It’s every single guy. You can’t pick one guy because every single guy was so committed to winning, so committed to doing whatever it took to win. I love this group. It’s a really special group.”

Now, the work begins to see if they can build on it. The NHL Draft is on Friday and Saturday. Free agency begins on Monday. The Panthers have 11 players set to hit the open market — most notably Reinhart and defenseman Brandon Montour — unless deals can be struck before then.

But even with a lot of turnover expected, the core remains. Barkov and Tkachuk are under contract for six more years. Forsling just signed an eight-year extension. Forward Evan Rodrigues is signed for three more years. Bobrovsky and defenseman Niko Mikkola are signed for two more years. Ekblad, Bennett and Verhaeghe under contract for one more year. Team is trying to re-sign Reinhart — and Montour if possible. Lundell and defenseman Josh Mahura are restricted free agents.

But that said, there will be voids to fill in the room.

The pending free agents, beyond Reinhart and Montour: Forwards Tarasenko, Okposo, Lomberg, Nick Cousins, Kevin Stenlund and Steven Lorentz; defensemen Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Dmitry Kulikov; and goaltender Anthony Stolarz.

This year’s group won’t be together as one unit again. That’s the nature of sports and the annual roster turnover that comes with it.

But forever and always, they will be connected by being the team that won the Florida Panthers their first Stanley Cup.

“It’s incredibly lucky,” Lomberg said. “You look up at any building and the rafters and all it is is legends, champions. To be able to be a part of one of them is tough to put in the words. My favorite part about all this is that all these guys we did it with, we’re gonna be together forever in one way or the other. We’ll always be binded by being Stanley Cup champions.”

These photos capture electrifying Game 7 where the Florida Panthers win first Stanley Cup