SUNRISE, Fla. -- Every time the Florida Panthers win, Brad Marchand knows what's coming next: his teammates fire plastic rats at him with their sticks as they leave the ice in one of the NHL's oddest postgame celebrations.
"Yeah, they're shooting to hurt now," Marchand said on Saturday, ahead of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Carolina Hurricanes. "Matthew Tkachuk caught me with one last game that I actually really felt there."
Panthers fans have thrown toy rats on the ice in celebration since the 1995-96 season, when forward Scott Mellanby exterminated a rodent with his stick -- in a moment forever known as "The Rat Trick" -- in the same season that Florida made a miraculous run to the Stanley Cup Final. Rats have become unofficial mascots for the franchise, to the point where their official team store not only sells rodent-adorned merchandise but also the plastic rats themselves.
Marchand has been called a "rat" with frequency during his 16-year NHL career, which is hockey parlance for being an agitator on the ice. So the celebration was a natural evolution when the Panthers acquired him at the NHL trade deadline from the Boston Bruins.
With the ice littered with plastic rodents at the end of Panthers wins, Marchand's teammates began shooting rats at "The Rat" on their way to the dressing room.
How did this tradition begin?
"They see my family on the ice and want us to be together," Marchand deadpanned.
Actually, it was Panthers winger Evan Rodrigues that first shot a rat at Marchand in celebration.
"Yeah, I don't know how it started. But I think we won the first game he was here, so we ended up doing it. And it's just kind of became a thing," Rodrigues said.
Later, Florida captain Aleksander Barkov and Tkachuk -- who has his own reputation as an agitator -- started slapping rats at Marchand as well.
"It's just one of those things that happens organically," Marchand said. "We don't overthink it. We just have fun out there."
It's not only happening at home for the Panthers. In Raleigh for Game 2 of the conference finals, some of the Florida fans in attendance tossed enough rats on the ice after the 5-0 victory that the Panthers players had ammo for Marchand.
That was the first time Florida coach Paul Maurice witnessed the tradition firsthand, as the coaching staff waited for the players to file out of the rink.
"I will tell you that they're shooting them as hard as they can," Maurice said. "They're not flipping them at him. There's shrapnel around there, and I didn't have any equipment on. I was just trying to get off the ice without getting hurt. They're heating them up at him, and he's trying to get out of the way. That's funny as hell."
Marchand said it's a "small sampling" of the fun the Panthers are having together, as they attempt to win a second straight Stanley Cup championship. Center Sam Bennett said that's just who they are.
"We don't change the way we prepare for games from regular single games to playoff games. We're always joking around. Even before Game 7 [of the Stanley Cup Final], there was just as many chirps and jokes going around before that game as in a preseason game," he said. "I think it's just the way our team prepares and it seems to work for us. So we definitely enjoy it."
Maurice said all the fun that is had in the regular season gets much better during a long postseason run.
"There are really fun stories that are just kind of organic. Now they're ripping the plastic rats off Marchy, and it's funny as hell," he said.
