Carter Verhaeghe: Extending With Florida Panthers ‘The Goal’
After a busy summer full of celebration, Carter Verhaeghe is not concerned about going into the 2024-25 season without a contract.
Photo by Colby Guy
Carter Verhaeghe was one of the few players on the Florida Panthers who earned two rings this summer.
After winning the Stanley Cup, Verhaeghe married his wife Casey, and is now headed into the final season of a three-year deal he signed with the Panthers back in 2021.
It made for quite the busy summer.
“It’s been a great summer,” Verhaeghe said. “I guess it’s been busy, definitely after winning and getting married. It’s definitely been a nothing but awesome summer. I wish it was a little more spaced out, but I’ll take it any way I can. A lot of achievements and accomplishments and it just feels really good.”
That busy summer of celebration did not deter the two-time Stanley Cup champion from preparing to get back on the ice and prepare to fight for his third.
If anything, it made him hungrier for more.
“It definitely brings a little bit of an advantage, for sure,” Verhaeghe said. “Knowing what it takes and a lot of guys returning to the team. We’ve been there and done it, we know what it takes and how hard it’s going to be but mostly we’re just focusing on the goal this year and the goal to do it again.”
When Verhaeghe arrived in South Florida in 2020, he was coming off of a Cup championship with the Tampa Bay Lightning where he was a depth piece for the team, still fighting for a full-time NHL job.
Four years later, he has reached the 40-goal mark, scored some of the most iconic goals in franchise history and now has a Cup as one of the headliners on a team.
Now, the shifty forward who fought his way up from the ECHL to carve out a role as a star serves as an inspiration to some of the younger players who are fighting their way for jobs at this year’s Panthers training camp.
“I’ve done so many of these camps and I still feel like a kid coming to these camps,” Verhaeghe said. “It’s cool. For a lot of them, it’s their first NHL camp and seeing guys like [Aleksander Barkov] on the ice is pretty cool. When I was younger, I was in Toronto and there were so many good players there. And you look up to those guys, see them on the TV all the time and for me, it was definitely special. I’m sure it’s the same for these guys.”
Verhaeghe is not concerned about going into the season without a contract.
He has made South Florida his home, and as someone whose jersey number is destined to be hung in the rafters after countless heroic playoff moments, wants to be there for the long run.
“I love playing here,” Verhaeghe said. “It’s like my home.
“It feels like I’ve been here for a long time. I love playing here, I love being a Panther, I love the guys and I love the organization. It’s been first-class every since I came and it feels like home. So, that’s definitely the goal: to sign here.”