Inside look at Florida Panthers

NHL.com is providing in-depth roster, prospect and fantasy analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept. 1. Today, the Florida Panthers.

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.”

Tampa Bay, which lost to the Colorado Avalanche in the 2022 Cup Final, is the only team to reach the Final in three consecutive seasons since Edmonton from 1983-85. Florida became the first team to win the Cup the season after losing in the Final since the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Red Wings in 2009.

The Panthers’ loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2023 Final was disappointing but was also an important step in their progression. The first step came when they defeated the Washington Capitals in the 2022 Eastern Conference First Round for their first Stanley Cup Playoff series win since being swept by the Avalanche in the 1996 Cup Final.

Being swept by Tampa Bay in the 2022 second round led to the franchise-altering trade to acquire Tkachuk from the Calgary Flames on July 22, 2022. Adding players such as Ekman-Larsson, Tarasenko, forward Evan Rodrigues and defenseman Niko Mikkola in the year after the loss in the Final to Vegas helped push Florida over the hump last season.

The next challenge is staying on top.

“To me, it’s all about the mindset and it’s the same,” Zito said. “The mindset is the same: How can we be better? What do we need to do to be better?”

Like many Cup-winning teams before them, the Panthers learned that it’s difficult to keep a winning roster intact. There are NHL salary cap limitations, and championship-winning players are attractive to other teams in free agency. But Florida took care of its top offseason priority by re-signing Reinhart, who was second in the League with an NHL career-high 57 goals last season (Auston Matthews, Maple Leafs, 69) and scored the winning goal in Game 7 against Edmonton, to an eight-year contract.

To help fill the holes created by the departures of Montour, Ekman-Larsson, Tarasenko and Stenlund, the Panthers signed defensemen Nate Schmidt and Adam Boqvist, and forwards Tomas Nosek and Jesper Boqvist (Adam’s older brother), each to a one-year contract. Additionally, forward Anton Lundell could grow into a bigger role in his fourth NHL season, and forward prospects Mackie Samoskevich, 21, and Justin Sourdif, 22, each will have a chance to earn a job in training camp.

There will be obstacles to overcome, such as potential mental and physical fatigue after playing an NHL-high 55 playoff games over the past three seasons, but the Panthers believe they have enough left to make another run at the Cup and add another chapter to their success story.

“That’s why I chose to sign with the Panthers because I still think they are a pretty good team, and they have a chance to do it again,” Nosek said. “So, I want to win, and I would do anything to help that team to win the Cup again.”

NHL.com/fi independent correspondent Varpu Sihvonen contributed to this report