For Panthers lifers like Barkov and Ekblad, Florida’s Stanley Cup run has extra meaning
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Aleksander Barkov’s decade with the Florida Panthers has consisted of eight different coaches, three different general managers — including one who held the job twice and another who fired a coach to take the job himself — and, until the last two years, 15 more regular-season losses than wins and never a single appearance beyond the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It hasn’t always been an easy career for Barkov, who was named captain in 2018 and then promptly missed the Cup playoffs for the third straight year, and yet now the 27-year-old center is on the biggest stage in his sport, still with the team that drafted him as a 17-year-old prospect with the No. 2 pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft.
The perpetually underappreciated All-Star forward is finally in the Stanley Cup Final.
“It’s amazing, of course,” Barkov said Friday. “It doesn’t matter how and where you’ve been. To be here, it’s just an unreal feeling.”
The Panthers’ underdog story is still alive in the Stanley Cup Final. ‘It’s a movie’
Barkov, after missing the standard 16-team playoffs six times in his first eight seasons, could have thought about leaving the Panthers and instead he never even tested free agency, signing an eight-year, $80 million extension to stay in Florida in 2021, right as he was starting the final year of his first standard contract.
Aaron Ekblad, the No. 1 pick by the Panthers in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft, was in a similar position. The star defenseman signed an eight-year, $60 million extension with Florida in 2016 after just two seasons — with a losing record overall — and has even weathered serious injuries in each of the last three seasons to get to this point.
They’re easily the two longest-tenured Panthers — star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and forward Eetu Luostarinen are the only other players on the postseason roster who even predate general manager Bill Zito’s arrival in 2020 — and this run is extra significant to them.
“Those players on our roster who were here when I arrived have been the sort of the steadying—I don’t want to go so far as to say core because we have a lot of new guys who are part of it,” the GM said Friday, “but certainly it’s almost as if they had a little bit of ownership in the collective from the beginning.”
Ekblad, like most of his teammates, struggled through an up-and-down regular season. The 27-year-old Canadian’s plus-minus of minus-14 was the second worst in his career and it came when he was expected to once again be at least a dark-horse contender for the James Norris Memorial Trophy.
In the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, he has returned to form with Florida’s fourth best plus-minus and third most blocked shots, entering the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, which begins Saturday against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena.
“It’s obviously been a long time coming for us,” Ekblad said last week after correcting the suggestion that he and the Panthers have been “waiting” for a run like this.
“Working to get here,” he said.
Barkov has similarly rewritten his story in these playoffs. In his first three postseasons, the Finnish star averaged just 0.8 points per game and was never part of a single win in the second round.
In these playoffs, Barkov notched 14 points in 16 games in the first three rounds and has been a spectacular defensive presence, only on the ice for one opposing 5-on-5 goal in nearly 153 minutes in Rounds 2 and 3.
“He’s been through the ups, the downs, the struggles, probably a bunch of different, different management, whatever,” left wing Carter Verhaeghe said Friday. “He’s seen it all and I think for him it’s probably really special to get to this point.”
Panthers announce Game 3 concert
There will be some very Florida entertainment outside FLA Live Arena before Game 3 of the Cup Final on Thursday.
Flo Rida will be part of the NHL’s special Final concert series, the league announced Friday, and play a show in Sunrise to coincide with the Panthers’ first home Final game since 1996. The rapper, who’s originally from Miami Gardens, will play at 6 p.m. in parking lot C2 outside FLA Live. Gates will open at 6:30 p.m.
The Panthers will also hold watch parties outside the arena for Games 3 and 4, the league announced.
Additional performers for future games will be announced in the coming days.
