For almost 40 years, no NHL team managed to make it to three straight Stanley Cup Finals. Now, two teams from the same state have done it one after the other.
On Wednesday, the Florida Panthers defeated the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Final to advance to their third straight Stanley Cup Final. Their unprecedented run of success comes just after their in-state rival, the Tampa Bay Lightning, advanced to three straight Stanley Cup Finals of their own from 2020-22.
The last time the Stanley Cup Final did not feature a Florida-based team came in 2019, when the St. Louis Blues defeated the Boston Bruins in seven games to win their first championship. That was before the pandemic, by the way.
Some fans will inevitably complain about these two teams, along with a few others, having the advantage of playing in a state with no income tax, thus meaning that players are willing to sign for less money to play there. Considering that four of the past five Stanley Cup winners have come from tax-free states (Lightning in 2020 and 2021, Vegas Golden Knights in 2023 and Panthers in 2024), it's becoming harder and harder to ignore those complaints.
However, that shouldn't take away from the outstanding job these two teams have done at building their rosters.
Many of the Lightning's stars during their cup runs were homegrown talents, including Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy. They had some trade acquisitions like Ryan McDonagh and Blake Coleman, but for the most part, their success earlier this decade goes back to their draft picks made many years prior.
The Panthers definitely have a great deal of homegrown talent as well, including arguably the best two-way player in the game in Aleksander Barkov. However, they've generally been more aggressive on the trade market than their counterparts, with Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett and more arriving in major deals. Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky was also a major free agency signing, and while his contract looked bad for a while, he's been nothing short of spectacular over the past three years.
The Eastern Conference essentially runs through the Sunshine State now, and if the Panthers can win their second straight championship, the league as a whole might run through it as well.
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