Panthers embrace legend of rat ahead of Cup Final against Oilers

SUNRISE, Fla. -- It has been almost 30 years since Scott Mellanby played the role of exterminator in a cramped and humid dressing room near downtown Miami.

Who knew killing a rat in a dank locker room back in 1995 would resonate -- and still be part of a hockey team’s identity -- all these years later?

The Florida Panthers open the Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS, CBC), and rubber rats remain in vogue among hockey fans in South Florida.

Though the Panthers do not sell actual rubber or plastic rats (more on that later), you can buy T-shirts, hats, and even large chains with a golden rat dangling from them.

“One of the members of our flight crew had earrings with rats on them the other day,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “It has permeated what we do here. Cats and rats, right? I think it’s awesome.”

The story of South Florida’s obsession with rats began where the Panthers franchise did: Miami.

The Panthers were preparing for the 1995-96 home opener against the Calgary Flames when, to the team's horror, a giant rat scurried across the floor.

Players from the Panthers jumped into their small stalls, giving the rodent space.

Mellanby, however, grabbed his stick and one-timed the rat into the wall.

Since Miami Arena was not built with a hockey team in mind, a makeshift locker room was created for the Panthers when they joined the NHL in 1993.

The rat hit the drywall, and that was that.

Mellanby scored a pair of goals using the same stick in a 4-3 win over the Flames on Oct. 8, 1995.

After the game, goalie John Vanbiesbrouck talked to reporters in the cramped space and pointed to the blood-stained wall.

Though Mellanby came a goal short of scoring a hat trick in that win, when you count the rodent, Vanbiesbrouck quipped he had the first “rat trick" in NHL history.

A legend was born.

Scott Tinkler, one of Florida’s equipment managers, tossed the dead rat out near the railroad tracks that ran alongside Miami Arena.

Some players were upset, Tinkler recalled.

“They asked if I kept it," said Tinkler, who continues to work with the Florida equipment staff.

“No! It’s a huge dead rat! I picked it up with a stick and threw it away. Some of the guys wanted to take it to a taxidermist or something."

A few days later, Tinkler was walking through a local mall.

He saw a grotesque-looking rubber rat standing on its haunches in a Halloween shop, bought it, and set it up where the original rat had died.

The media wrote about the shrine to the rat, and the next time Mellanby scored a single rubber rat hit the ice.

The Panthers, since Day One, had been looking for something to get fans interested in their team and looked to the Detroit tradition of the octopus.

When that one rat was thrown from the stands, the Panthers knew they had something.

“We could not fabricate it," said Greg Bouris, the team’s director of public relations at the time. “We said, ‘We’ll know it when we see it.’ We would get our ‘thing.’ It had to be natural because fans would see right through it if it was contrived."

After the first rat, Bouris added a "rat counter" to the game notes -- and made sure the local media mentioned it in their notebooks.

“We had our octopus," Bouris said.

At first, only goals by Mellanby were celebrated with thrown projectiles. Fans got tired of waiting and eventually started throwing them whenever a Florida player scored.

"This was a long time ago, and there was no social media where this would have caught fire the next day," said Maurice, who was in his first season coaching the Hartford Whalers at the time.

"It was a story that grew, and grew, and grew. I thought this was a story that would taper out over time. It has not. It’s great, right? The fans decided this was their thing. It was not the team or the League; it was the fans who decided, ‘This is important to us.’"

As the team kept winning, more rats hit the ice, so many that the NHL made a rule outlawing the practice the following season.

In 1996, however, it was rat mania in South Florida.

Not only did the team sign a sponsorship deal with a local exterminating company to collect the rats off the ice, but the wife of the team’s owner was famously seen tossing one over the glass.

At the same time, the public address announcer asked fans to please not do so.

Those Panthers made it to the Stanley Cup Final in their third season and, aside from the team's scrappy nature, the rats are what are remembered.

As the season progressed, hundreds of rats would rain down onto the ice whenever the Panthers scored a goal.

In the 1996 Eastern Conference Final, Pittsburgh goalie Tom Barrasso sought refuge in his net as rats flew down from all corners of Miami Arena.

“People still remind me of that. ‘You’re the rat guy!’” Mellanby, now a senior adviser with the St. Louis Blues, said during a 20-year celebration of the 1996 team.

“I have great memories of that and of that team.”

Today, the rat craze is mostly contained in shirts and the like.

Some fans paint rubber rats -- they now stock up on them during Halloween season or order them in bulk online -- in team colors and with their favorite player’s number, then gift them to that player.

Though Florida fans do not throw rats onto the ice after goals as they did in 1996, they do following victories, not only in Sunrise, but also on the road.

“This is something cool that our fans do and I love seeing them on the ice when we’re on the road,” defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “It is fun to see.”

When the Panthers won in Boston to move on in the playoffs both this season and last, Florida players smiled as they scooped up a handful of the rubber critters and tossed them back to their fans.

South Florida is a place with few traditions.

Rubber rats is one of them.

It may be odd to see a local supermarket make cakes with giant, frosted-covered rats on them elsewhere, but not here.

“It is one of those old-school hockey traditions and this one belongs to South Florida," forward Ryan Lomberg said.

“It is cool we get to be a part of it. It would be really cool to win this and see all the rats on the ice. Have it come full circle.”