Florida Panthers Begin Training Camp, Look to Avoid ‘Stanley Cup Hangover’

After winning the Stanley Cup, the Florida Panthers quickly shifted their focus on how to defend their title. They’re looking to make sure there is no championship hangover in South Florida.

When the Florida Panthers went in for their fitness tests following a summer of celebrating a championship, the words ‘Stanley Cup Hangover’ were not in their vocabulary.

All of the celebration, all of the memories made with family and friends, only made the Panthers hungrier, and per coach Paul Maurice, most of the returning players came into camp more fit than they were at this point last season.

“The hangover concept, we don’t believe in it. It certainly isn’t a physical issue for us. We’re stronger than we were at this time of the year last year with all of the returning players,” Maurice said at the team’s media day on Wednesday. “It’s a credit to them because they couldn’t have made the improvements they made without spending the time to do it.

“So, we know on Day 1 that we are physically going to be in as good or better shape than we were last year and now it’s about handling the day that we’re in. Tomorrow will be the same first day as we’ve had the last two years to the minute and we’ll measure that and build from there.”

Famously, a lot of players referred back to these first three days of training camp for a reason: They’re hard.

And Maurice is not changing a thing about that.

As tough as it is, every returning player is looking forward to getting back on the ice and working their tail off to make sure they can bring the Cup back to South Florida.

“No camp I’ve had in the first few days is fun, but tha’ts just the way it is,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “I think as September starts to come around, I think if you ask anybody, your honest answer there is that these first few days have been in our heads. We’re looking forward to getting them out of the way.”

The Panthers could have just as easily spent this summer celebrating the Cup victory and taking it easy, but they didn’t because they believe they can do it again. And they are hungry to do it again.

Florida is returning a large bulk of core, with Brandon Montour and Vladimir Tarasenko being the lone big-minute players to depart via free agency.

With so many players returning from both of their back-to-back appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, the Panthers know what it takes to win and they were able to flip the switch during the offseason to get ready for the 2024-25 season.

“I think the greatest asset you can have is experience,” Tkachuk said. “I probably wouldn’t have said that two years ago or even last year, but the experience that we have gained is honestly priceless. We feel like we are in a great spot with the returning guys that we know what it takes, how hard it is to get there, but we’ve done it.

“That is something that really excites us and we have enough new guys that they came here for one reason. They want a chance to win one as well. That’s our motivation but we can’t think that far ahead now. We got to come out of this camp and get back to competing hard and set the standard for how we want play and how we’ve been playing the last few years and you kind of create your identity these next couple weeks. So, that’s our goal. Just be smart in how we’re treating this whole process. That’s what has made us successful: Taking it a day at a time and a game at a time. That’s what we’re going to do.”

The Panthers have had a lot of mileage over the past three years — playing in and winning the most playoff games in the NHL in that span — and at some point, it catches up to teams.

It happened to the Tampa Bay Lightning last season, who took a step back and fell to a wild card spot after a lingering injury from Andrei Vasilevskiy gave them an early-season hole to dig out of. They were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round for the second season in a row after making it to the Stanley Cup Final the previous three years.

Florida believes it has what it takes to win that war of attrition and make it to its third-straight Cup Final.

“I think, honestly, the more you play games, the more it helps you become a better hockey player,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “Obviously, we had a really short offseason. Like two months. And obviously, you need to rest a little bit because it’s such a long season and it’s been two seasons in a row that we’ve been all the way to the end. But at the same time, we’ve played so many games that it helps us to keep that game shape.

“We stay in shape when we start training again. We don’t feel like we’re starting from scratch, so I think it’s a good thing. We just want to keep going and keep these offseasons short.”

There was one particular sentiment that was echoed throughout the day: The Panthers cannot win the Stanley Cup in a day.

Just as they did last year, they will have to face adversity and handle it just as they did last season. Even if every new wave of it could be handed the new label of ‘Stanley Cup Hangover.’

They’ll have to ignore that outside noise.

But the real way they can truly avoid the Stanley Cup Hangover is by working their way past those moments just as they have done the past two years.

“There are going to be, and rightfully so, some backward-looking things we will deal with at the start of the season. The banner-raising, all of those good things you get to enjoy, but we need to make sure our day is completely focused on what we’re doing. Not living in the past,” Maurice said. “Then maybe more importantly, that whole hangover idea, not living in the future.

“So, we’re going to get beat in November in a game against a Western Conference team that didn’t make the playoffs this year. And it will be assigned a ‘hangover loss.’ It won’t be true. We lost that exact same game the last two years, it’ll just be a perspective of the why. Because the standard that, in some ways, this team gets held to its last game. You win the Stanley Cup, then you should win every game. That’s just not real. So, we have to handle our day with the right perspective of where we are at and move forward.”