Tipsheet

The Florida Panthers Are Stanley Cup Champions Again

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  June 17, 2025 11:30 PM

It’s been 32 years since a Canadian team hoisted the Stanley Cup over its shoulders, and that will remain so. The Florida Panthers are back-to-back champions, besting the Edmonton Oilers in six games. The Oilers had scrappy wins in games one and four, taking the Cats into overtime, but Florida’s depth and relentless forecheck ground them down. They won game six handily, 5-1. Sam Reinhart scored four goals, the first player to have a playoff hat trick (and a four-goal playoff game) in Panthers history. 

That’s what Florida does: they wear you down to a nub and then obliterate you. It’s a marvel to watch. There are bruisers and dogs on every line in Florida’s lineup, which makes skating against them in these brutal playoffs a task too great for most clubs. This year was a rematch in the Stanley Cup finals between the two teams. Edmonton lost to Florida in seven games in 2024. This year, they got rolled in six, with the last two games not being all that competitive. Game three was probably the most chippy, with 140 penalty minutes being allocated in a match where the Oilers truly lost their heads (via WaPo): 

In a Stanley Cup finals rematch, the Florida Panthers won their second straight NHL championship, beating the Edmonton Oilers in six games. 

The dynamic, dominant Panthers topped the Oilers on Tuesday night, 5-1. Florida became the eighth team to hoist the Cup on home ice in consecutive seasons — a feat that hadn’t been accomplished since Edmonton’s 1987 and 1988 triumphs. The Oilers are the first team to lose back-to-back Stanley Cup finals since 1977 and 1978, when the Boston Bruins were successively denied by the Montreal Canadiens.  

Florida is now the gold standard of the NHL, a blueprint from which teams will likely model in the hopes of constructing their own championship rosters. It will still be tough as the Panthers will likely be able to retain core pieces of this team for the foreseeable future. They will enter the 2025 season with $19 million in cap space; that's lots of breathing room. In 2026, it will balloon to $41 million and $59 million in 2027.  

Alexander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Brad Marchand, Gustav Forsling, Aaron Ekblad, Eetu Luostarinen, and Anton Lundell…this team is stacked. Some depth pieces will be lost like last year, but they'll find a way to have another line-up of bruisers. 

Well done, Florida. We expect to see you at the White House again soon. What an epic trip that was this year. 

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The last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup was the Montreal Canadiens in 1993.