As the 24-year drought continues for Canadian teams in the NHL to be able to celebrate as the NHL champions, the Florida Panthers who started as a franchise in the NHL in 1993 had to make sure that they made this series the most suspenseful entertaining series of the year. Making the final game of the Stanley Cup playoffs to battel it out through all 7 games, at length winning 2-1. After being down 0-3 to start the series on the brink of elimination, to nearly imploding while being outscored by the Oilers 5-18 during the first 3 games, the Florida Panthers are now the 2023-2024 Stanley Cup Champions. Making sure that every hour, every minute, and every second went down to the wire before they were able to hoist the Lord Stanley and bring it down to Florida. For what will be one heck of celebration for every die-hard hockey fan in the state of Florida excluding Tampa Bay Lightning fans.
One of the most astonishing yet overlooked stat lines during the Stanley Cup finals is the Edmonton Oilers having all 5 out of the Top 5 leaders in points, and still failing to reach the pinnacle and end their season in victory. In the points column, the Oilers had Connor McDavid at #1 with 42 points, Evan Bouchard at #2 with 32 points, Leon Draisaitl at #3 with 31 points, and Zach Hyman tied at #4 with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins both ending the postseason with 22 points. To have all five of those all-stars leading in the points column and still lose to the Florida Panthers, who looked entirely defeated the first three games is incomprehensible. But let’s not forget that the Panthers had Alexander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuck, both tied at #4 with 22 points, Carter Verhaeghe at #8 with 11 goals, and Sam Reinhart at #11with 10 goals. Considering the Oilers were dominant in almost every aspect of the game, this goes to show that hockey is the ultimate team sport when it comes to depth and being able to utilize every ounce of talent on the roster. If you look at goaltending, the Panthers came in 6th which is a great place to be, considering every team in front of them were eliminated earlier during the postseason. When it came down to “Powerplay Percentage”, the Panthers came in at 11th , which is mediocre but acceptable depending on who the opponent was in front of Florida. So clearly, goaltending, defense, and avoiding doltish penalties to be able to stay out of the penalty box will give any team a better chance to put them ahead of the pack when lacking talent compared to their opponents in the scoring/points column.
To make the 2023-2024 season even more special for the reining Stanley Cup champions, Matthew Tkachuk is now the only Stanley Cup champion in an immensely talented Tkachuck family. Throughout the entire playoffs you would get a glimpse of Matthew’s father Keith Tkachuck, and his brother Brady Tkachuck up in their box showing a vivacious amount of support for Matthew every time his blades would hit the ice. Another huge supporter who is now also a champion for the first time in his career this year would be his childhood friend Jayson Tatum, who also had an outstanding season with the Boston Celtics in the National Basketball Association. Known far and wide, Tatum and Tkachuck were both Red Devils during their illustrious run together at Chaminade Prep, which is a small but now very well-known Catholic school in St. Louis. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see these two highly touted champions bring both pieces of hardware back to the old stomping grounds where it all began.