The Florida Panthers are the 2024 Stanley Cup champions.
Florida took Game 7 in the championship series with a 2-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers Monday night, winning the franchise’s first championship.
“It’s not a dream anymore,” Matthew Tkachuk told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan. “It’s not a dream, it’s reality. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
THE FLORIDA PANTHERS ARE THE 2023-24 #STANLEYCUP CHAMPIONS! 😺 pic.twitter.com/ayDHiNT7Ob
— NHL (@NHL) June 25, 2024
Captain Aleksander Barkov, who has spent all 11 seasons of his NHL career in Florida and tied for the team lead in points this postseason, became the first Panthers player to hoist the Stanley Cup.
“I had no idea how heavy it is,” Barkov told Kaplan. “So it is heavy, but it was an amazing feeling.”
Florida’s series win appeared all but certain after they won three straight games to open the Final, but the Oilers responded with a three-game win streak of their own to force a Game 7. The Panthers were just the third team in NHL history to give up a 3-0 series lead in the Final, and the first to do so since 1945.
Connor McDavid, who recorded back-to-back four-point nights in the Oilers’ comeback effort, became just the second skater to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as postseason MVP, recording 42 points (8g, 34a) in the playoffs and 11 points (3g, 8a) in the Final.
Like the series as a whole, Game 7 went down to the wire. Carter Verhaeghe opened the scoring for Florida in the first period before Oilers forward Mattias Janmark tied the game just 2:17 later.
But the Panthers held on. Sam Reinhart retook the lead for Florida with less than five minutes to go in the second period, and the Panthers’ defense held firm in the third period despite several close calls from Edmonton. Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who let in five or more goals in each of the Oilers’ wins, returned to his early-series form with another stellar showing Monday night.
“Everything was worth it. Every day, every minute of the work, it’s worth it for this moment. And I want to enjoy it,” he told Kaplan, later adding, “It wasn’t easy after they got to 3-3, three losses in a row. But we were thinking that we have to overcome that to become a true champion. We have to overcome the adversity and everything that [the] opponent or enemy throw at us to become the really true champion.”
The win marked head coach Paul Maurice’s first championship after 26 seasons in the NHL. He finally got the chance to hoist the Cup midway through a postgame interview, leaning over to whisper to goaltender Spencer Knight before lifting the trophy, relief evident on his face.
Asked what he said to Knight, Maurice responded, “I’ve been chasing that for a long — [some] unkind words about how hard she was to catch.”
Florida came close to a championship in 2023, upsetting the league-leading Boston Bruins in the first round and going on a Cinderella run to earn a spot in the Final, but they fell to the Vegas Golden Knights in five games. Maurice saw that loss as part of the Panthers’ eventual road to victory: both series pushed the team to the brink, but this time they came out on top.
“It was perfect Florida Panther fashion,” he said of the Game 7 win. “Nothing’s easy. Nothing’s easy for us. It wasn’t easy last year. They did everything they could to win that. And the people that were there, Radko Gudas, Eric and Marc Staal, all of those guys that were a part of it, they’re a part of this too. Right? They’re a part of that.
But it’s not been easy. So we needed to lose three of the finals to learn how to win four. And the fact that it was so hard makes it so special.”
It takes a team. pic.twitter.com/zG73mllSUI
— Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) June 25, 2024
