The Florida Panthers pose for a photo with the Stanley Cup after winning game six of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers at Amerant Bank Arena. Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

A Second Straight Stanley Cup for Panthers and the Dolphins Angles

Originally posted on Miami Dolphins on SI
By Alain Poupart | Last updated Jun 19, 2025 1:38 PM ET

As Miami Dolphins fans wonder their team has done enough this offseason to feel confident the 25-year run without so much as a playoff victory finally will end, South Florida watched its hockey team win the Stanley Cup for a second consecutive year.

The question right now with the Dolphins centers around the direction of the team and whether it's rebuilding; with the Panthers, it's about whether it's too soon to use the term "dynasty."

And another topic of conversations on social media is how this Panthers run compare to those of the other professional sports team in South Florida, a discussion that includes the early-1970s Dolphins and the early-2010s Miami Heat.

All those teams won back-to-back titles, though the Heat has the advantage of having appeared in four consecutive finals compared to three each for the Dolphins and Panthers, who preceded their current three-year run by finishing with the best record in the regular season before being bounced in the second round of the 2022 playoffs.

The Dolphins' run began with the franchise's first-ever playoff appearance in 1970, followed by a Super Bowl loss in 1971, back-to-back titles in 1972 and 1973, and another playoff appearance in 1974 before the team lost stars Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield to the short-lived World Football League.

When discussing the Dolphins run, we obviously have to mention the unprecedented and still unduplicated perfect season of 1972. Yes, that counts for something.

So how to rank all those runs?

It's difficult to go against four consecutive NBA Finals appearances for the Heat of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, but then there's the perfect season too.

And, of course, with the Panthers, their run is still ongoing.

So it's a tough call all the way around.

What's for sure is it's been too long since the Dolphins had any kind of run. Forget about Super Bowl titles, the Dolphins haven't made the playoffs more than two consecutive years since they had a five-year run from 1997-2001.

Their best run since the glory days of the 1970s came a decade later when they made the playoffs five consecutive times from 1981-85 and went to the Super Bowl in the 1982 and 1984 seasons.

Again, been too long.

For the champs pic.twitter.com/c84TrIUrhQ
— Miami Dolphins (@MiamiDolphins) June 18, 2025

A PANTHERS LESSON FOR THE DOLPHINS?

Naturally, Dolphins fans will look at the Panthers with a degree of envy and wonder why the football team can't learn and maybe copy what clearly has been a fabulous recipe for the hockey team.

It's not that simple, though, because we're talking about two vastly different sports, with one huge difference immediately being that hockey lends itself a lot more to a team-first concept than football.

As we mentioned at this time last year, the Panthers turned the corner in 2023 after embracing a new playing style, one more suited for playoff hockey.

In trading leading scorer Jonathan Huberdeau to the Calgary Flames for gritty (and also high-scoring) forward Matthew Tkachuk and bringing in veteran coach Paul Maurice, the Panthers totally changed their team, going from a high-flying, high-octane offensive team to a more defense-oriented that wins with discipline and grit, a team much better built for playoff success.

See where we're going with this?

The Dolphins are going to be running it back for a fourth season under McDaniel with a team built around its incredible speed, a formula that's been good enough to help the team put itself in position to win the AFC East title in both 2022 and 2023 before things came crashing down at the end.

While injuries played a role in the disappointing finishes each year, it's fair to wonder how far the Dolphins could go with that formula, and maybe the additions of defensive tackle Kenneth Grant and guard Jonah Savaiinaea in the first two rounds of the 2025 NFL draft was an acknowledgement by the organization that it needed more physicality.

The formula of outrunning and outscoring their opponents has produced very good results from September through November, but it has come up short down the stretch against the 49ers, Chargers and Bills three seasons ago and against the Ravens, Bills (again) and Chiefs two years, and even against Green Bay and Houston last season.

In all those cases, the opponent found a way to solve and slow down the Dolphins offense and Miami hasn't been able to counterpunch, much like the Panthers didn't have an answer when the Tampa Bay Lightning shut down their offense on their way to a four-game sweep in the second round of the 2022 NHL Playoffs.

Another factor in the Panthers' success has been a streak of roster decisions that's been nothing short of remarkable, including waiver wire acquisition Gustav Forsling, and trades for playoff MVP Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Seth Jones, Brad Marchand and, of course, the huge Tkachuk pick-up.

Other than the Tkachuk trade, the Panthers paid very little in compensation to land cornerstone players, and even the Tkachuk deal can't be seen as anything other than a home run.

The Dolphins have made their share of big trades in recent years as well, landing Tyreek Hill, Jalen Ramsey and Bradley Chubb, but they paid big for those, whether in draft capital (more significant in football than hockey) or cap space or both.

Those three were part of a 2023 Dolphins roster that was the team's best in many, many years and all played big roles in the 11-6 finish, but again things fizzled at the end.

The Dolphins crashed last year when Tua Tagovailoa missed six games — though it's fair to wonder how far they could have gotten even with him considering their record against playoff opponents with him at quarterback.

The Dolphins don't look like a serious Super Bowl contender at this point, but just moving in that direction with at least one playoff win would be a good start.