Panthers to host 1st Stanley Cup Final game in South Florida since 1996

SUNRISE, Fla. --Some people thought they'd never see the day, but here it is.

The Stanley Cup Final will be played in South Florida for the first time in 27 years and the first time at FLA Live Arena when the Florida Panthers host the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 3 on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, TBS, truTV, CBC, SN, TVAS).

The Panthers will try to win a game in the Cup Final for the first time. If they do, they will cut the Golden Knights' lead to 2-1 in the best-of-7 series and raise the excitement level even higher.

"You can sense just going around town, anywhere you go, that people are talking about the Panthers," said Doug Plagens, who is in his eighth season as the Panthers' radio play-by-play broadcaster and lives within walking distance of the arena. "The buzz is huge. It's really cool to see. … To be able to share a victory with the home fans would be priceless."

The Panthers won three series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1996, in their third season as an NHL expansion team, but were swept in the Cup Final by the Colorado Avalanche. They lost Games 3 and 4 at Miami Arena, and the end was particularly crushing -- 1-0 in triple overtime.

After missing the playoffs 18 times and losing in the first round six times, they finally won another playoff series last season, defeating the Washington Capitals in six games in the Eastern Conference First Round. But their triumph was short-lived; Florida was swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round.

Now they've made the Cup Final as the second wild card in the East, defeating three of the top four teams in the NHL in the regular season: the Boston Bruins (first), the Carolina Hurricanes (second) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (fourth).

Finally, the Cup Final is at FLA Live Arena. The building opened in 1998, and in the years since, it has had multiple names and hosted the NHL Draft (2001 and 2015) and the NHL All-Star Game (2003 and 2023) twice each.

"You really wondered if you'd see another Stanley Cup Final, if you'd see a game in this arena," said Steve Goldstein, the Panthers' TV play-by-play broadcaster, who started out with the team in radio in 1997. "So for those people that have been close to it and been around it for a while, like the longtime season-ticket holders, yeah, it's a special night."

This run has energized casual fans and attracted new fans, too.

FLA Live Arena has a capacity of 19,250 for hockey, making it the sixth-largest arena in the NHL and the largest home among the 16 teams in the playoffs this season.

For six of its seven home playoff games this season, Florida has been over capacity. The Panthers' biggest crowd was 20,065 for Game 4 of the conference final, when they clinched a trip to the Cup Final with a 4-3 win against the Hurricanes.

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"Game 3 and 4 of the Eastern Conference Final against Carolina is the loudest I ever heard the building," Goldstein said. "It was wild in here. It's a big building, so it's 20,000 people. It's not [17,200] or [17,300]. And I think so many people are on board now with this run this team has been on, really out of nowhere."

It feels like the old days.

"Now you get the electricity back I saw in the early years around South Florida," said Bill Lindsay, a Florida forward from 1993-99 and in 2001-02, who is now the team's radio color analyst.

The Panthers had never held a watch party at FLA Live Arena until Games 1 and 2 of the Cup Final. Thousands filled the lower bowl and parts of the upper bowl to watch on big screens as the team played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The players felt the love when they returned home.

"It's amazing," said captain Aleksander Barkov, who has been with the Panthers since they selected him with the No. 2 pick in the 2013 NHL Draft. "Like yesterday, landing and driving through the airport, fans are there. Drive back to my home, and there's a lot of Panthers flags and everything everywhere. It's very exciting. It's greatest time of the year."

Flo Rida will fire up the crowd before Game 3, taking a stage in Parking Lot C2 outside FLA Live Arena at 6 p.m. ET. The concert will be free and open to the public.

"We're excited," Florida defenseman Marc Staal said. "It's a big building, a lot of people, and it's really loud. We feed off it."

They need to enjoy it. Everyone here does.

"I think you cherish this moment," said Ed Jovanovski, a Panthers defenseman from 1995-99 and 2011-14, now the team's TV studio analyst. "You have fun with it. I think that comes along with obviously keeping focus on what you need to do, but you never know when this opportunity comes again."

NHL.com staff writer Tom Gulitti contributed to this report