SUNRISE, FL – The 2023 Stanley Cup Final had just ended, the Vegas Golden Knights were celebrating their championship and a group of heartbroken Florida Panthers were taking off their skates for the last time that season.
At that moment, in the locker room, Aaron Ekblad made a promise.
“We will find a way to come back next year,” said the veteran defenseman.
Look, it’s not exactly uncommon for something like this to be said by the team that gets a chance at a championship and falls short. But these Panthers actually delivered on that promise – a rarity in hockey. Florida is back in the Stanley Cup Final, becoming just the second team in the last 40 years to lose the hockey title in the first round of the season and return the following season.
The Panthers won their second consecutive Eastern Conference title on Saturday night, beating the New York Rangers 2-1 to win the series in six games. The most recent team to lose the Cup Final one season and return the next was Pittsburgh, the Sidney Crosby-led team that lost to Detroit in 2008 and beat the Red Wings in 2009. Before that, it was in 1983 and 1984, when Edmonton lost. to the New York Islanders one year, and the following year beat them in five games in Wayne Gretzky’s first Cup.
“Just a lot of motivation, dedication, commitment”, advance the Panthers Matthew Tkachuk he said. “The right pieces were added. Some great pieces added. Just one mindset: do what you can to get back to it. And I thought the guys that were here last year did an incredible job coming back to the start of camp with that in mind. So we’re not done yet.”
Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final is Saturday; if Florida plays Edmonton, the Panthers will host the opener, and if Florida plays Dallas, it will be the Stars with home-field advantage.
Florida’s top 10 scorers from last season remain with the Panthers, and big moves were made after losing to Vegas as well. Florida added a trio of defensemen – Oliver Ekman-Larsson, former Panthers player Dmitry Kulikov and Niko Mikkola, all of whom played key roles throughout the season. Kevin Stenlund was brought in to bolster the attacking corps, and Cup winner Vladimir Tarasenko came to Florida in a late-season trade. Tarasenko scored the series-deciding goal against Rangers.
“If you make the finals, I don’t know how many teams are actually going to improve the next year because usually you pay a bunch of guys because they made the finals and the salary cap changes and you’re going to lose some guys,” Panthers coach Paul said. Maurice. “Our hockey team has improved from last year to this year. We had good guys last year and I still love that year and will love that year separately and differently than any other year I coached, but we got better.”
The scenario – losing in the title round one year, going that far again the next – is seen far more regularly in other major sports than in the NHL.
In the NBA, the one-year runner-up reached the following season’s finals 26 times in 77 years, winning 14.
Baseball has seen the loser of the World Series return to the next Fall Classic on 29 occasions in the last 120 years, three of them – Kansas City in 2014 and 2015, the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017 and 2018 and Houston in 2021 and 2022 – coming in the last decade .
In the NFL, the Super Bowl loser played eight times in the following Super Bowl, going 3-5. Last time this happened: New England, who lost Super Bowl 52 to Philadelphia and beat the Los Angeles Rams the following year .
It happened another 21 times in the NHL, but to be fair, most of those cases occurred in a very different NHL. When the Rangers did it in 1932 and 1933, there were nine teams. Louis did this in 1969 and 1970, there were 12 teams. In the more than half century since, this has happened only four times in the NHL: Boston lost in consecutive Finals in 1977 and 1978, then Edmonton, then Pittsburgh and now Florida has its chance.
“I think it comes down to our heart and our will,” Panthers forward Sam Bennett said. “We really want it, and it’s one thing to say you want it, but to actually go out there and prove that every night how hard you’re going to work is a different story. We really want it.”
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