SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Only eight franchises in NHL history have reached the Stanley Cup Final in three or more consecutive seasons.
There’s Montreal, Toronto and Detroit, franchises that all have three separate streaks of doing so. And five other franchises — Edmonton, the New York Islanders, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Tampa Bay — have had such a streak once.
The Florida Panthers have a chance to join that club.
The Panthers are one win away from a third consecutive trip to the title round and can get there as early as Monday night when they host the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. Florida — the defending Stanley Cup champion — leads the series 3-0.
It would be the latest accomplishment in what has been an incredible turnaround for the Panthers, who were once a moribund franchise and now are a hockey power. Florida went to the Stanley Cup Final in 1996 and didn’t win another playoff series until 2022, missing the playoffs entirely 18 times in that span.
But in the last four years, Florida has more wins than any other team in the NHL — 243 and counting going into Monday night. The team won the Presidents’ Trophy for finishing with the league’s best regular season record in 2021-22, then hired Paul Maurice as coach going into the following season. The Panthers went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2023 and lost to Vegas in five games, then returned last season and beat Edmonton in seven games for the franchise’s first title.