For the second time in less than 12 months, the Florida Panthers visited the White House \u2014 and the trip followed similar beats to their first.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, as he did in 2025, praised the team for winning the Stanley Cup, shouted out individual players, joked about \u201ccomebacks,\u201d praised NHL commissioner Gary Bettman \u2014 who watched from the audience \u2014 and accepted a personalized Panthers jersey and a gold hockey stick. The Panthers also presented Trump with two championship rings.<\/p>\n
\u201cComebacks are wonderful, actually. Pretty good, right, Gary?\u201d Trump said to Bettman from the lectern. \u201cGreat job. I remember a long time ago when you got that job, and I said, \u2018They picked the right guy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In his 15-minute speech, Trump singled out Panthers owner Vincent Viola, general manager Bill Zito, coach Paul Maurice and players Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Sergei Bobrovsky and Brad Marchand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of four goals in one game,\u201d Trump said to Reinhart, who managed that feat in Florida\u2019s Cup-clinching Game 6 win over the Edmonton Oilers. \u201cI\u2019ve heard of a hat trick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turning around to look at players and coaches standing behind him, Trump said to laughter: \u201cGood-looking people, young, beautiful \u2014 I hate \u2018em. You hate standing here with all this power behind you. But I\u2019ve got power too, it\u2019s called the United States military. I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also noted that the Panthers were the 32nd consecutive American team to win the Stanley Cup. \u201cWe have a little competition with Canada,\u201d Trump said after applause. \u201cThey\u2019re great people, though. They\u2019re great people. We\u2019re doing much better than Canada, but that\u2019s OK, right? We want them to do well, and they\u2019re gonna do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
At various other points, Trump bragged about oil prices and the stock market, said he was removing criminals from the country and praised politicians in attendance.<\/p>\n
After Trump spoke, it was Viola\u2019s turn at the microphone. Viola was nominated to serve as Secretary of the Army in the first Trump administration before he withdrew from consideration, and Trump called him a \u201cwinner\u201d from the lectern.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to make it pretty clear that we\u2019re honored to be here, and we\u2019re honored to be here with you as the president,\u201d Viola said. \u201cI speak on behalf of every Florida Panther fan all over the world: We\u2019re not gonna stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Viola came Panthers alternate captain Matthew Tkachuk, who along with Bettman and Wayne Gretzky was named to Trump\u2019s council on fitness, sports and nutrition in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two Cups was pretty good, but that walk with you (into the White House East Room) might\u2019ve trumped it all there. That was pretty amazing,\u201d Tkachuk said to Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say on behalf of the whole organization and mainly the players, we are so honored to be here. Being an American, I know I said it last year, but nothing beats this. I\u2019m so proud to be an American so proud to be here with you and everybody else,\u201d Tkachuk said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Representing) you and the millions back here next month in the Olympics will be one of the highlights of my life, so thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time in less than 12 months, the Florida Panthers visited the White House \u2014 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,3274,575,85],"class_list":["post-415904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-florida-panthers","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}