In some books, the Florida Panthers’ 2-1 victory against the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season would have been the happy ending to a story they had been writing for three seasons.
As much as the Panthers have enjoyed celebrating the first championship in their 30-season history, though, they don’t view it as the end of anything for them.
“There’s satisfaction, for sure, but it’s not a completed event,” general manager Bill Zito said. “It’s not, you built your dream house and, ‘OK, the house is built.’ No, it’s like, ‘OK, now let’s build another one.’ … I think it makes you more hungry.”
Repeating as Cup champions might be more difficult than winning last season, particularly after Florida lost key players such as defensemen Brandon Montour (signed with Seattle Kraken) and Oliver Ekman-Larsson (Toronto Maple Leafs), and forwards Vladimir Tarasenko (Detroit Red Wings) and Kevin Stenlund (Utah Hockey Club) through free agency. But most of the core remains intact, including forwards Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Bennett, defensemen Gustav Forsling and Aaron Ekblad, and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.
That group now carries with it the knowledge of what it takes to win the Cup. That will help the Panthers this season as they attempt to match their cross-state rivals, the Tampa Bay Lightning, who were the last team to win the Cup in back-to-back seasons, in 2020 and 2021.
“We won the Cup, the greatest prize, but you want to feel the same feelings again,” Barkov, the Panthers captain, said when he hosted his day with the Stanley Cup in his hometown of Tampere, Finland, on July 31. “That leaves you hungry. Winning the Cup helps us this coming season, but winning two in a row will [in] no way be easy.”