The Florida Panthers have truly taken the meaning of petty to another level.
The 2025 Stanley Cup champions held their celebratory parade on the streets of Fort Lauderdale Beach on Sunday, just five days after the franchise’s series-clinching Game 6 victory over the Edmonton Oilers.
And the eagle-eyed admins of Bleacher Report’s Open Ice account on X spotted an incredible detail in the Instagram story of Panthers defenseman Niko Mikkola’s girlfriend, Emma Sulonen.
She posted a photo of what appeared to be a trio of players holding trays of sushi and a bottle of sake (Japanese rice wine) while on a parade bus. Sulonen tagged the restaurant, TAKATO, which is located not far from the parade route in Fort Lauderdale, at the Conrad Hotel.
Per Empty Netters Podcast co-host Dan Powers, who Bleacher Report cited in its post, the manager of TAKATO told him the Oilers called ahead of Game 5 on June 14 – when the series was tied two games a piece – to book out the restaurant for after Game 6 in anticipation of winning the Stanley Cup in Florida.
“I go, ‘Interesting,'” Powers recounted during a live taping of the podcast from the Elbo Room Beach Bar on Wednesday. “I’m not going to snitch from the account, but what I will do as a rat … I hit up a contact on the Florida Panthers, someone on the inside, and I give them that information. That information makes it on the whiteboard pregame Game 5, a little motivation for the boys.”
The plan clearly worked. The Panthers won Game 5 by an emphatic 5-2 score in Edmonton and followed up that performance with a dominant 5-1 win in Game 6 at home to lift their second consecutive Stanley Cup.
The team went the extra mile with that pettiness by eating the same championship meal Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and the rest of the Oilers were hoping to chow down on.
Florida and its players are only just getting their well-documented celebrations started, too. On Wednesday, the Stanley Cup was already spotted with cracks in its bowl and a dent in its base, presumably after one too many drops by elated Panthers players.
The shenanigans are all extra salt rubbed in the wounds of Edmonton fans, who have been waiting to see their team reclaim the NHL crown for the first time since 1990.
The Oilers carried the hopes and dreams of Canadians once again after falling to this same Panthers squad in the 2024 final, but the country’s Stanley Cup drought continues after 32 years. The 1993 Montreal Canadiens remain the last team to represent the red maple leaf as league champions.
