With their 5-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night, the Florida Panthers cemented their status as one of the NHL’s all-time great teams. They are just the 17th team to ever win back-to-back championships — and only the fifth since 1990 — and are now the gold standard for winning in the present-day NHL.
They got here through a masterclass in roster-building that blended some good draft luck, tremendous NHL scouting and an aggressive mindset that never left the organization satisfied with just simply being good enough.
They made their important draft picks count
The one thing that is a little different about this Panthers team when compared to a lot of the other champions is that only five players on the team — Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Mackie Samoskevich, Anton Lundell and Dmitry Kulikov — were actually drafted by the Panthers. And in Kulikov’s case he left the Panthers for a few years before recently returning, while Samoskevich has only appeared in four playoff games.
Barkov, Ekblad and Lundell are the only draft picks by the team playing major roles. But they are big roles. All three of them were first-round picks, with Barkov and Ekblad being top-three picks in their respective draft classes.
When teams are lucky enough to be in those draft positions they need to hit home runs with them to build a contending roster. The Panthers did, and especially so with Barkov. He has become one of the best two-way centers in the NHL, blending top-line offense with elite defense to make him a perfect franchise cornerstone.
They established a clear identity
A lot of teams talk about having an identity, or want to have an identity, but few teams are able to pull it off as well as the Panthers have.
Their talent speaks for itself, and is the biggest part of their success, but they also have a very clear playing style that management has tried to cultivate.
That playing style — mean, nasty, maybe even a little dirty. Getting players like Sam Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk and Brad Marchand helped make the Panthers not only one of the deepest teams in the NHL, but also one of the fiercest and most annoying to play against.
Not every team needs to play that way or be built that way. But it helps to have a standard of what you’re looking for — no matter what it is — and no team has pulled that off better than the Panthers.
Always an all-in mentality from management
There are a lot of trades and free-agent signings that have turned the Panthers into the team they are, but there are a handful that really helped set the tone for management’s all-in mentality.
The first was after the 2021-22 season when Florida was coming off a Presidents’ Trophy winning campaign. Despite having the best record in the NHL, management was not pleased with losing in the first-round of the playoffs. It responded by trading one of the team’s top players — Jonathan Huberdeau — to the Calgary Flames for Tkachuk in one of the NHL’s biggest recent blockbusters. That not only helped set its identity, but also gave it another top-tier star.
Then at this year’s trade deadline the Panthers made two more all-in moves to get defenseman Seth Jones and Marchand in separate deals, making a team that was already a champion even better.
Their NHL scouting has consistently hit home runs
Top draft picks and big trades are important, but hitting unexpected home runs is also a huge help. And the Panthers have several of those. When they acquired Sam Reinhart from the Buffalo Sabres, he was far from the player he is now. He was a good, if disappointing former No. 2 overall pick in Buffalo. Gustav Forsling, now a top defender, was a waiver claim. Carter Verhaeghe has been a top-line player in Florida but was organizational depth in Tampa Bay.
