When the Cup is on the ice

The Florida Panthers won the whole thing last night, it's a really cool trophy.

The 2023-24 hockey season came to end on Monday.

The Florida Panthers famously defeated the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in Game 7 to win the Stanley Cup. Up in Hershey, PA, the Bears won back-to-back Calder Cups in an AHL finals rematch against the Coachella Valley Firebirds.

About two weeks earlier the Florida Everblades won the Kelly Cup, winning a third straight ECHL title.

A week before that, back on June 2, the Saginaw Spirit won the Memorial Cup with a thrilling 4-3 victory against the London Knights in the championship game.

I was fortunate enough to cover parts of three of those four championships, while my good friend Stephen Meserve was needling me about how I failed to make it to Hershey or Coachella to complete the full sweep.

I was also on the ice for post-championship celebrations after the Memorial Cup and Stanley Cup were won.

Those trophies are living history, the Stanley Cup is 131 years old. The Memorial Cup has been around since 1919. If you ever get a chance to see either of them up close, take the time to study them, read some of the team names and years, it brings back either memories or new curiosities as a hockey fan — you can’t spend time with one of those trophies and not want to learn more.

(In fact, my one qualm with the Calder Cup is that it only has 20 names on it, with each year the oldest championship plaque being retired to the Hockey Hall of Fame.)

First lets go back to June 2, when I was on the ice after Saginaw won the Memorial Cup.

That was the equivalent of a Game 7, a winner-take-all championship game, where the host Spirit scored in the dying seconds to win the title against a truly hated rival.

I’ve covered junior hockey more in the past couple seasons, and I’d made several trips up to Saginaw during the regular season — it’s a pretty talkative team — but once they won the cup, it was emotional silence.

Yes, the answered interview questions and hollered, but anything of real substance or quote didn’t tell the entire story. To me it was this look by Zayne Parekh, who will be drafted later this week in Las Vegas, that told a better story.

A kid who just realized a dream, clutching the trophy, lost in the moment. I spoke to him after this interview he did with the OHL social channels, he simply smiled and wondered aloud if this was all real.

Fast forward to last night, and the Panthers were wondering if it was all real.

Panthers GM Bill Zito couldn’t hold back the tears speaking and thinking about the team, Paul Maurice finally won his title and you could see wave after wave of emotion roll over him.

I spoke to dozens of players and team officials, in that moment on the ice no one has an instant answer. It’s always a couple seconds of silence and aw, the pictures tell a better story than the words ever could.

And this was my favorite photo that I captured.

That’s Panthers depth forward Jonah Gadjovich. He didn’t play a single game in the playoffs, but played in 39 regular season games. He might get his names on the Stanley Cup if the team petition to adds him.

Despite not playing a playoff game, Gadjovich was an emotional piece of the Panthers locker room, an everyday glue guy at practice who multiple players praised throughout the postseason.

He also had young twins born during the playoffs, and one of the first things Gadjovich told me before the Stanley Cup Final started was about how the rest of his teammates, led by Aleksander Barkov, had supported the Gadjovich family when the babies were born.

It was the middle of the playoff run, but the Panthers, as they always have, took time for family and celebrated the bigger, more important things in life.

And so when it came time to celebrate the Stanley Cup itself, what better way to remember the moment than the new dad, dual-wielding twins in carseats?