Why the Panthers are the nicest 'rats' to win the Stanley Cup (twice)

SUNRISE, Fla. -- The Florida Panthers had to win the Stanley Cup, and then they had to win another one, because it's the ultimate way to infuriate everyone who isn't the Florida Panthers.

They're the most antagonistic trash-talking bullies in the National Hockey League. Opponents decry their actions and fans of other teams outright loathe them. It took 29 years, but the franchise made famous for having rats thrown on the ice also now has the most famous rat on the ice in winger Brad Marchand -- a label he has accepted. Being the last team standing isn't just a tribute to their elite preparation, execution and talent. It's delivering on the promise of their endless taunting.

"It's the bad-boy mentality. They embody it. They hit you and then they stand over you and tell you how much better they are than you. And then they tell you that you're going to be beaten, by any means necessary," one current NHL player told ESPN. "They're going to do everything they can to embarrass you, not only physically but on the scoreboard."

It's the provocation from players such as Marchand and Matthew Tkachuk. It's their ability to dish it out and gleefully take it, such as when big-bearded Jonah Gadjovich stuck out his tongue at the Edmonton Oilers after having been bloodied in a fight with Darnell Nurse.

It's the opposing goalies with whom center Sam Bennett has collided with a plausible deniability of guilt. It's their ability to draw penalties but not take them. "They seem to get away with it more than we do. It's tough to find the line," Oilers winger Evander Kane lamented during the Stanley Cup Final.

Marchand responded to Kane: "Sometimes we get away with things. You can't call everything all the time."

The more nefarious parts of the Panthers' game are a feature, not a bug. Their antagonism and swagger are the sweeteners for one of the best recipes for success the league has seen cooked up: Offensive domination, defensive suffocation and about a dozen players that always seem to rise to the occasion.

Florida has advanced to three Stanley Cup Finals under head coach Paul Maurice. They're the first team to do so in three straight full NHL seasons since the Edmonton Oilers from 1983-85. (The Tampa Bay Lightning won two Cups and lost in their third trip to the Final during the season-altering COVID-19 pandemic.)

Like the 80s era Oilers, the Panthers lost in their first trip, getting eliminated in five games against the Vegas Golden Knights, and then won back-to-back Stanley Cups. The Panthers are the seventh team in the past 40 seasons to win consecutive Cups.

No one else in the NHL can match their depth. Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart, both finalists for the Selke Trophy as best defensive forwards in the NHL, on their top line, deployed with frequency against Oilers star Connor McDavid. Bennett, leading all playoff scorers in goals, and superstar winger/agent of chaos Tkachuk on the second line. Marchand, saving the best playoff series of his life for the Stanley Cup Final, cementing an unmatchable third line with criminally underrated forwards Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell.

Two defensive pairings -- Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling, as well as Seth Jones and Niko Mikkola -- that were brilliant in the postseason. When all else failed, Sergei Bobrovsky was the ideal last line of defense in goal.

The Panthers were the best road team in NHL playoff history, tying the record for wins (10) and obliterating the record for goals scored away from home: 61, or 12 more than Wayne Gretzky's Los Angeles Kings scored in 1993 (49).

"Anybody that knows hockey is in awe of what they've been able to accomplish," said Hockey Hall of Famer Mark Messier, a member of two separate back-to-back Cup winners in Edmonton, who is now an analyst for ESPN.

Messier doesn't see the Panthers as a team defined by their villainy.

"They can play any style that you want. They have such underrated talent at many positions," he said. "You don't get the right players at the right stages of their careers all the time. This is a very sophisticated, talented, driven team."

Someone else that doesn't want the Florida Panthers defined solely as agitating bullies?

The Florida Panthers themselves.

"I just don't see where we're these big physical sons of b----es," general manager Bill Zito said.

The Panthers argue that the on-ice antics others have used to define them in these two Stanley Cup championship runs aren't indicative of who these players are off the ice. That perceptions of their villainy shouldn't overshadow the chemistry, culture and camaraderie that are the actual foundations for these championships.

"We don't talk about it. That's not our style. That's not what we talk about before games," Tkachuk said. "We want to play fast and physical. We want to stick up for each other when it's there."

Are the Florida Panthers actually the friendliest "rats" to ever to win the Stanley Cup twice?

"At the end of the day, you're willing to do things on the ice that aren't typical of you as a person off the ice," Marchand said.

THERE'S PROBABLY NO GREATER indication that the Panthers frustrate opponents than the passion with which opponents swear that the Panthers do not, in fact, frustrate them.

"[Agitation] is part of their DNA. It's what they do," Oilers center Leon Draisaitl said during the Stanley Cup Final. "I'm not going crazy. I don't think anybody's going crazy. It's an emotional time. They're good at what they do. But no one's going crazy here."

Kane said the Panthers' reputation for agitation is a bit overstated.

"You know what? I think they get a little too much credit for how crazy they drive teams. I don't think it's Florida driving us crazy at all. We've done a great job of not letting them get in our heads," said Kane, who had more penalty minutes in the first five games of the Stanley Cup Final (20) than he had in his previous 15 playoff games combined (12).

Playing the Panthers can be exasperating. Not only in the things they do, but in how they get away with the things they do. Such as when Bennett keeps colliding with opposing goaltenders.

It happened at least four times in this playoff run, most infamously when Bennett concussed former teammate Anthony Stolarz of the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 1 of the second round. Stolarz wouldn't return to the playoffs. Bennett wasn't penalized, and there were no repercussions with the NHL Department of Player Safety. But Toronto fans and media were outraged, adding this Bennett incident to a list of others in his career -- including when he concussed Leafs forward Matthew Knies by throwing him to the ice in May 2023.

"I've seen every hit that Sam Bennett's thrown since he was 12 years old on TV this morning," Maurice said the day after the Stolarz incident. "There was a hit 2 years ago that [the media has] shown 4,000 times. There was a parking ticket seven years ago that I think made the video."

In the 2025 playoffs, Bennett would also collide with Carolina's Frederik Andersen, and had two instances in which he toppled into Stuart Skinner's crease against the Oilers.

"Obviously, you don't like when guys are purposely falling into your goaltender," Kane said.

For many opponents, the Panthers are Team "They Just Can't Keep Getting Away With It" in the NHL.

"It's annoyingly frustrating," one current NHL player said. "When you play them, you're like, 'They figured it out.' They're being smart, in quotation marks, when it comes to that kind of stuff. But it's all within the rules."

Defenseman Nate Schmidt hated facing the Panthers before signing with them last offseason. "I've got to tell you that playing against them is no fun," he said. "I do enjoy playing with them versus being on the other side of things."

The Panthers weren't always as provocative as they are now. Back in 2022, Florida won the Presidents' Trophy with the league's best record (122 points) and its best offense (4.11 goals per game) under interim coach Andrew Brunette, who took over after head coach Joel Quenneville's resignation. Their leading scorer was winger Jonathan Huberdeau, who had 115 points in 80 games, tied for second overall in the NHL.

But after the Panthers were swept in the second round by the rival Tampa Bay Lightning, it was obvious that their regular-season success didn't translate to the postseason after "an in-depth examination of all aspects of our team," as Zito termed it at the time. On June 22, it was announced that Brunette was done and that Paul Maurice would be the new head coach.

That hiring wasn't universally praised -- Maurice had been behind NHL benches since the mid-1990s with the Hartford Whalers, with only one trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2002 to his credit. But Zito said the Panthers' change in attitude "starts with Paul."

The Panthers had 842 penalty minutes in their Presidents' Trophy season. They increased to 998 in Maurice's first season, and then 1,116 in his second season, when Florida won the Stanley Cup.

One month after Maurice's hiring came another landmark moment, and an even more shocking one: Huberdeau and defenseman MacKenzie Weegar were traded to the Calgary Flames for Tkachuk.

The Panthers had now entered their Swagger Era.

"I hate Edmonton, but I hate Tampa more now," was the declarative statement from Tkachuk at his introductory news conference. The Lightning had eliminated the Panthers in consecutive postseasons. It is perhaps no coincidence that Florida is 2-0 against Tampa Bay and Edmonton since the Tkachuk trade.

"I bring a certain swagger that will really help this team," Tkachuk said at the time. "I have a good confidence. It's not a cockiness. I think some of these teams in this conference that have had success have that. I have to help with that."

A big part of that swagger comes from Tkachuk's willingness to say anything or do anything to win, as anyone who watched the first USA vs. Canada game in the 4 Nations Face-Off no doubt recalls. But Zito said that Tkachuk is the personification of why the Panthers are misunderstood as the NHL's current reigning bullies -- their agitation simply comes from how difficult it is to play against him.

"He has a nuanced game that combines elite hands and hockey sense with a level of compete. When you look across the league at the players who have that, pretty much to a man, they're agitating," Zito said.

This is where the Panthers reject the premise that they're the king rats of the NHL.

"I think our reputation is just guys that play hard. We don't like giving space on the ice, and that leads to a lot of confrontation and a lot of collisions and stuff like that," defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. "And it's not necessarily that we're being bullies, we're just trying to play as hard as we possibly can."

Zito agreed.

"Bodychecking is part of the game of hockey. When you play the game the right way and pay attention to all the details, checking is going to be part of it. It's not to intimidate. It's not to injure. It's literally so that you can't get into the play if I bump into you," Zito said. "It's just chess, except with time and space. So it's effective."

Marchand has now been a part of two of the most difficult teams in the NHL to play against: The Boston Bruins, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 2011, and the Panthers, with whom he lifted one on Tuesday.

Both teams were called "bullies" -- it's hard to forget the image of Marchand delivering a series of blows to Daniel Sedin's head in the Stanley Cup Final against Vancouver. But both teams, according to Marchand, just played the way you need to play to survive in the postseason.

"Obviously, the high-end skill game and finesse, it gets you here, but it takes a whole different game and level to take you far," he said. "That's obviously what we had for a very long time in Boston. What Florida's done a great job at is building a team that's tough to compete against this time of year. So that's the style of game that you want to be part of."

Marchand has personally experienced the villainous side of the Panthers. Bennett gave him a gloved punch in last year's playoffs that left Marchand concussed and forced him out of their series.

"I didn't hold a grudge. I know how this game's played. I played a similar way and it's something that we joke about now," said Marchand, now Bennett's teammate. "I've been in positions where I've done things like that to guys that I end up being teammates with. Things happen on the ice and you move past it."

That's hockey, according to Marchand.

"I can't speak for other sports, but our culture is where you could fight a guy and meet up afterwards and laugh about everything. That's just how it is," he said. "You're doing a job when you're on the ice. That's all."

Which is to say that off the ice, the Panthers are different people. And that chemistry is the real reason why they've skated the Cup for a second straight time, according to them.

"They're hard on the ice. They are. And most of that is driven by how they feel about each other. They don't want to let the other guy down. There's a caring about them," Maurice said. "These guys are different."

IF MARCHAND HAS learned anything with the Florida Panthers, it's that plastic rats hurt when your teammates are slap shooting them at you.

In one of the playoffs' most memorable new traditions, Panthers players would take turns shooting rats, tossed on the ice by fans, at Marchand after victories.

"They see my family on the ice and want us to be together," Marchand deadpanned. "They're just bullying me. They're shooting to hurt now."

Besides being their most dominant scorer in the Stanley Cup Final, Marchand was also the fulcrum for the Panthers' merriment after coming over from the Bruins at the trade deadline.

"Marchy and I bounce off the walls quite a bit. It's nice to have somebody else to do that with," Schmidt said. "One bouncy ball is fun. When you bang two of them together? It's a little bit more fun. So I've enjoyed his time here."

The bouncing around during the pregame. The rat-shooting. The now-legendary poker games on cross-continent flights. The team field trips to Dairy Queen, and the subsequent confusion about whether Marchand was eating a Blizzard between periods of a playoff game.

(Spoiler: It was honey, something Marchand has enjoyed since he was a child feeding it to his stuffed Winnie the Pooh doll. "It's what we do in Halifax. We feed teddy bears honey," he said.)

"There's a million things that happen behind the scenes that fans don't see," Marchand said. "Those are little things that make it a little bit easier and allow you to get your mind off some of the stress. I think you can see when we're together, we're just like big kids. Behind closed doors, everyone's always joking around and having fun."

There's a democratization of comedy in the Panthers' dressing room. The players say no one is spared from the punchlines, no matter their salary or ice time. It's the byproduct of the team's overall mindset. When Tkachuk says "nobody cares who scores," they mean it.

"It can't be overstated, the character and ... I don't know if it's the right word, but the grace of each guy. If you came into the meal room, you wouldn't ... know ... who's ... who," Zito said, pounding his hands on the table for emphasis. "You didn't know who scored the winning goal. You didn't know who didn't play. I think that, as much as anything, is a testament to those guys and their character."

Every offseason, Maurice does a "culture survey" for his team. Last offseason, one of the players reported that when they walked into the Panthers' dressing room for the first time "it felt like I'd been there for 10 years" with the team.

"That room that we have is so welcoming. Your personality fits almost no matter what it is. The more unusual your personality, the more you're going to fit in our room," Maurice said. "As long as you do those four or five things you need to do, everybody gets to be themselves."

What makes that chemistry work?

"That's all Barkov, truly," Maurice said.

"[Barkov] is like a magnet. You just find yourself gravitating towards him," Schmidt said. "You see what Cap does and it just kind of trickles its way all the way through the lineup. There's just no other way to do it. It's not like he's not a vocally imposing person. It's just, you need to do it because it feels like you have to do it for him."

Zito likened Barkov to a planet with "all the energy that comes from him" as a leader.

"It starts with Sasha," the GM said. "Paul's talked about this. I've talked about it. The players have talked about it. The only person who doesn't [get] talked about it is Sasha. How caring he is as a human and as a teammate. He makes you want to be a better person. So then it's easy to have the positive aspects of your personality come through. It's like he pulls it out of you."

Barkov has learned from his teammates, too. Marchand in particular, since he arrived at the trade deadline.

"He's obviously very old, but he still works hard and wants to be better," said Barkov, 29, of the 37-year-old Marchand. (See? Everyone gets clowned on.) "It's fun to see, and it's contagious. You want to work as hard as him."

Every incarnation of the Panthers during their three-year reign as Eastern Conference champions has seen turnover on the roster. Eric and Marc Staal, as well as Radko Gudas, were on the 2023 team. Brandon Montour, Ryan Lomberg, Nick Cousins, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Vladimir Tarasenko were on the Stanley Cup winner last season. This season saw Marchand, Schmidt, Seth Jones and A.J. Greer join the roster, among others.

"You just try to fit in, come in and not disturb anything, not change anything. Just seamlessly trying to blend in and add a little bit of your spice, I guess you'd say," said Greer, who signed as a free agent.

"Coming into a group who had just won the Stanley Cup, I was just trying to inject a little bit of energy. They had a long season. Sometimes that can get to you mentally and physically of course. So I come in and kind of replenish that energy, bring in a new face and just be myself, personality-wise," he said. "The guys welcomed me very, very well. Those guys that are all around the locker room and that's a big reason why they won."

To hear the stories of humility and familial warmth from inside the Panthers remains in stark contrast with the team that frequently emerges on the ice. They are the epitome of "a player you love to have on your team and hate to play against," a time-tested hockey clich that Marchand used to describe Bennett recently. They frustrate opponents during games and push each other to play like champions behind the scenes.

"This is something about hockey culture that makes it special and unique," one current NHL player said. "Some of the guys that are the biggest pieces of s--- on the ice are the greatest people off the ice."

Maurice was recently asked about that dichotomy.

"I'll ask you two questions that might be personal. You don't have to answer. Have you ever shotgunned a beer? And have you ever been to church?" he began.

"Now, would you shotgun a beer if you're in church? No, you wouldn't, and that doesn't make you a hypocrite. There's a context in that place for all things."