Panthers in awe of Brad Marchand’s ‘will to win’ in Cup run

SUNRISE, Fla. — After 14 years, Brad Marchand was reunited with the Stanley Cup. He lifted and kissed the silver chalice moments after the Florida Panthers won Game 6 against the Edmonton Oilers 5-1closing out their series and capturing the Cup for a second straight season Tuesday night.

“It feels completely different. I have so much more respect and appreciation for how difficult it was to get here, how hard it is and the amount of things that need to go right to win. Everything has to line up perfectly,” said Marchand, who won the Stanley Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011. “My situation’s a perfect example of that. I shouldn’t have been here, but it worked out.”

Marchand, 37, was a driving force behind the Panthers’ Stanley Cup win. He had 10 goals and 10 assists in 23 games, skating a plus-17 with linemates Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen. While he didn’t score in Game 6, Marchand had six goals in six games in the Stanley Cup Final with two game-winning goals.

“He’s been a big-game player his whole career. In 2011, he was arguably our best player,” said Shawn Thornton, Marchand’s teammate on the Bruins who is now a business executive for the Panthers. “I wasn’t surprised to see the magic he was making. I don’t think the age thing is in his head.”

Marchand spent 16 NHL seasons with the Bruins until a contract extension impasse led to an NHL trade deadline move to the Panthers. It was a surreal moment for Marchand and the Panthers, as Florida had eliminated the Bruins from the 2023 and 2024 playoffs. Last postseason, Panthers center Sam Bennett injured Marchand with a sucker punch. On Tuesday night, they skated with the Stanley Cup as teammates.

“As soon as he got traded here, he chirped me in the group chat instantly for our history and the last playoffs,” recalled Bennett, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Stanley Cup playoffs MVP.

“What he’s meant to this team … I truly don’t think we win a Stanley Cup without him. His leadership, his will to win, it’s inspiring. I was telling him before every game, ‘We’re going to follow you.’ And we did. He was a dog every night. He for sure could have won this trophy,” Bennett said. “He’s a better player and person than I ever knew and I’m grateful that I got to play with him.”

Marchand said going from nemesis to teammate is a tribute to the chemistry of the Panthers.

“It just shows you that once you become part of a group and you get into this environment … when you’re playing on the same team with each other, you create such an incredible bond,” he said. “They already had an unbelievable culture that the new guys were able to kind of come into and just buy in and enjoy it and embrace it. They made it very easy.”

Florida general manager Bill Zito said Marchand also did his part to build team chemistry.

“I’ve been telling everyone that as much as he did on the ice, it’s what he did in the room that matters,” he said. “If you came in this morning, you wouldn’t have known who the new guy was. That says as much about who he is as a teammate and a hockey player as his extraordinary performance.”

For example, the Panthers started a tradition in the Stanley Cup playoffs where they would shoot the plastic rats fans tossed on the ice after victories — a decades-long tradition for the team — at Marchand as they left for the dressing room. Even as Florida celebrated the Stanley Cup win, the tradition continued: Forward Sam Reinhartwho scored four goals in the victory, reached down and threw a rat at Marchand as he was kissing the Cup.

“It still felt heavy, that’s for sure,” Marchand said of the Cup. “It’s pretty incredible to do it here at home. It’s so many people here that I love and that had been a huge impact on being part of this, so it’s an incredible feeling.”

Marchand now faces an uncertain future as an unrestricted free agent this offseason. But after the best playoff series of his career in the Stanley Cup Final, he’ll have plenty of suitors.

Florida closed out the Oilers with two straight wins, both of them defined by early offensive and consistently good defense.

The Panthers took the lead just 4:36 into the first period on an incredible individual effort from Reinhart. Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard passed the puck right to Reinhart just outside of the Edmonton zone. Reinhart skated into the zone, turned defenseman Mattias Ekholm inside out and beat goalie Stuart Skinner while falling down for his eighth goal of the playoffs. Skinner had returned as the starter after being benched in Game 5.

It would remain that way through the rest of the first period, which pitted two nervous teams against each other on specious ice, until Matthew Tkachuk scored his eighth of the playoffs. Using a perfect screen from Lundell in front of Skinner, Tkachuk’s shot from between the circles sailed into the back of the net for a 2-0 lead.

It continued a string of early dominance for the Panthers in the series. Florida scored at least two goals in the first period of all six games of the series and outscored the Oilers 9-0 in the last four games of the series.

The Panthers relied on goaltender Sergei Bobrovskywho had help in the zone when he needed it, for 10 saves in the second period. Then Reinhart struck again at 17:31 of the second period, as Aleksander Barkov turned a lackadaisical rebound by Skinner into a shot that banked off Reinhart and into the net for a 3-0 lead.

Reinhart completed his hat trick at 13:26 of the third period with an empty-net goal. Just 1:29 later, he scored his fourth goal of the game into another empty Edmonton net, giving him 11 goals on the postseason.

As the seconds ticked down, the Panthers began jumping over the boards to begin their celebration. The Panthers are the first team to repeat as Stanley Cup champions by beating the same team both years since the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Bruins in 1977 and 1978.

It was their third straight trip to the Stanley Cup Final. Does that make them a dynasty?

“Hell, yeah,” Tkachuk said. “Absolutely.”