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The Florida Panthers decided to do something different this season when they were awarded the Prince of Wales Trophy and they hope it pays off.
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly presented the trophy to captain Aleksander Barkov following a 2-1 victory against the New York Rangers in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, Saturday. Barkov did not touch the trophy before he and his teammates posed for photos with it.
“We touched on it last year and it didn’t work out for us,” forward Sam Bennett said. “So, we thought we’d try something different this year.”
Last season, the Panthers touched and skated with the trophy, and forward Matthew Tkachuk said, “The last thing we’re going to do is be superstitious and not touch it. Nobody said we were going to make the playoffs.” . I think it’s cool to touch it, carry it around and take pictures with it. “We earned it.”
However, Florida would lose in five games to the Vegas Golden Knights in the Cup final.
At the end of Saturday’s game, it appeared that coach Paul Maurice had told Barkov on the bench not to touch the trophy.
“He also told me last year (not to touch it),” Barkov said later. “Last year we had a different situation, but we’re not going to talk about last year. This year, I think we all agreed that we weren’t going to touch it.”
When told that Barkov had revealed that he had challenged him a year ago when it came to touching the trophy, Maurice said: “I think ‘Sasha’ has a pretty good sense of humor. I don’t actually remember. All I know is that there’s a There’s a picture here somewhere of him carrying it down the hall, so at that point I had to say I told him, right? It has nothing to do with anything, but we play our silly games.”
In 1996, the only other time the Panthers won the Prince of Wales Trophy, captain Brian Skrudland lifted the trophy. The Panthers were then swept by the Colorado Avalanche in the Cup final.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the trophy between 2020 and 2022, touched it three times, but were defeated in the Cup final by the Avalanche in six games in 2022. Before that, they won the Cup in 2020 against the Dallas Stars and in 2021 against the Montreal Canadiens.
Recent history doesn’t seem to be on the Panthers’ side. Five of the last eight teams to win the Cup have touched the Prince of Wales Trophy. Prior to 2020, Sidney Crosby brushed it in 2016 and 2017 before helping the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Cup each season, and Alex Ovechkin did the same in 2018 with the Cup-winning Washington Capitals.
The tradition of not touching the Prince of Wales Trophy has not worked well for the Eastern Conference champions in recent seasons. The 2011 Boston Bruins are the most recent team to win the Cup after opting not to touch it. The last five teams that did not do so lost in the Cup final.
Bruins captain Zdeno Chara did not touch the trophy in 2019 and Boston lost to the St. Louis Blues in seven games in the Cup final. The New Jersey Devils (2012), Bruins (2013), Rangers (2014 ) and Lightning (2015) lost in the Cup final after refusing to touch the trophy.
Due to temporary divisional realignment due to COVID-19 in 2020-21, the third round of the playoffs was renamed the Stanley Cup Semifinals instead of the conference finals. The Prince of Wales Trophy was awarded to the Lightning after defeating the New York Islanders in seven games.
The Prince of Wales Trophy has been awarded to the Eastern Conference champion since the 1993-94 season.
Florida will play either the Dallas Stars or Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final, which begins June 8. Edmonton leads that series 3-2 and can advance to the Cup final with a win in Game 6 at home on Sunday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, truTV, MAX, SN, TVAS).
NHL.com staff writer Amalie Benjamin and freelance correspondent George Richards contributed to this report.
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