Down 3-0, then storming back to tie the series, the Oilers gave the NHL its most anticipated Final game seven in decades – but it was the Panthers who shrugged off their reputation as a joke to take their first Stanley Cup
On what was their third attempt in franchise history, the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup. They didn’t do it easily. Up three games to none on the Edmonton Oilers, they let their series lead slip away, lost three in a row, and set up a deciding seventh game back in Florida Monday night, arguably the most anticipated Stanley Cup Final game seven in decades. It delivered an anxious end-to-end battle, and an exciting end to a long and unprecedented final round. Excitement is cold comfort for Oilers fans, whose hopes were high after Edmonton’s surprising resurgence. For them, the loss will sting even more than that of 2006, the last time the Oilers lost the Cup in seven. But for Florida, the Cup is the culmination of a 30-year journey from early expansion surprise to laughing stock and back again.
When the Panthers first went to the Cup Final, in 1996, the team was only three years old, one of the early forays the NHL made into the American South. Replete with high-quality expansion draft picks, including star goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, the Panthers surprised many on their way past their Eastern opponents on the way to the Cup. But those Panthers ran into a powerhouse Colorado Avalanche team, newly (and forcefully) decamped from Quebec City. The Panthers got swept, 4-0. Still, that early playoff run engaged a new fanbase and even established a bit of team lore, based on a story about how forward Scott Mellanby killed a rat that scuttled into the Panthers’ locker room at the Miami Arena during the team’s home opener that season. As other players jumped out of the way, Mellanby treated the rat like a puck, killing it with a hard one-timer. Fans took to tossing plastic rats on the ice to celebrate wins – a habit that’s stuck.
