The Florida Panthers defeated the Edmonton Oilers for the second year in a row to win the Stanley Cup, clinching the championship with a 5-1 win in Tuesday night’s Game 6 at Amerant Bank Arena in South Florida.
The Panthers closed out the series beginning with Sam Reinhart's unassisted goal in the first period, followed by a goal from Matthew Tkachuk which pushed the lead to 2-0. Reinhart then scored the next three goals -- his four goals tied Maurice Richard's in 1957 for a Stanley Cup Final record. Florida’s Carter Verhaeghe finished with three assists.
The Panthers' Sam Bennett earned the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player, after scoring a league-leading 15 postseason goals. He said after the game: "It's incredible. It's a feeling you can't really describe. Such an incredible group. Everybody wrote us off from the start of the playoffs. They had everybody beating us in every round, and we just had that fire, and we knew we had something special."
The Panthers are now the first team to win back-to-back titles since the Tampa Bay Lightning did so in 2020 and 2021.
Editorial credit: bella1105 / Shutterstock.com