{"id":304286,"date":"2025-11-21T01:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/304286\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T01:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:31:07","slug":"did-the-florida-panthers-sell-their-souls-for-back-to-back-stanley-cups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/304286\/","title":{"rendered":"Did The Florida Panthers Sell Their Souls For Back-To-Back Stanley Cups?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s starting to become very evident that a black cloud hangs over Sunrise.<\/p>\n<p>PublishedNovember 20, 2025 6:50 PM EST\u2022UpdatedNovember 20, 2025 5:47 PM EST<\/p>\n<p>FacebookTwitterEmailCopy Link<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">They say every Stanley Cup comes at a price.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Each team has had to sacrifice something to achieve their ultimate goal, whether it be losing key players to free agency or a few injuries here and there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">But the longer this season goes on (and it&#8217;s barely a month and a half old), the more I&#8217;m starting to believe the Florida Panthers sold their souls to some voodoo queen to win back-to-back Cups.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">As my good friend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outkick.com\/sports\/panthers-player-sidelined-freak-barbecuing-mishap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Matt Reigle wrote yesterday<\/a>, the Panthers lost another of their productive forwards when it was reported that Eetu Luostarinen would miss significant time with a hand injury from a barbecue incident.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">I&#8217;m dead serious.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">There&#8217;s bad luck and then there&#8217;s just a case of the universe being against you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Loustarinen is just the latest in a long line of injured Panthers, many who were significant contributors to last year&#8217;s Stanley Cup-winning team.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Of course, it started with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outkick.com\/sports\/stanley-cup-champs-dealt-major-blow-matthew-tkachuk-could-out-until-december\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Matthew Tkachuk right after the Stanley Cup<\/a> Finals and snowballed from there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">The Cats have also lost their captain, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outkick.com\/sports\/panthers-aleksander-barkov-could-miss-nhl-season\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Aleksander Barkov<\/a>, for the majority of the season, as well as tough fourth-liner Jonah Gadjovich and &#8220;program guy&#8221; defenseman, Dmitry Kulikov.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">As the injuries mount, Florida continues to look up at others in the Atlantic Division standings.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">While there&#8217;s still plenty of time to turn this around, the Panthers can ill-afford to lose more contributors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">When everyone started to crown the Panthers as a dynasty, something in the back of my head said it was way too soon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">The core of this team is still fairly young and locked into long-term deals, but this is how cracks start to form in a budding dynasty, and in a sport like hockey, this is just more proof how hard it is to win three Cups in a row.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">It&#8217;s hard enough just to win a Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Back-to-back is virtually impossible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">If you&#8217;re a Panthers fan, the message shouldn&#8217;t be how the dynasty is over, but rather how lucky you were to witness such a run of excellence.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Again, this could all be for naught. Florida could get healthy and go on another deep playoff run.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">My point is to just enjoy these things as they happen rather than always waiting for the &#8220;next one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">And, while you&#8217;re at it, get me the number of that voodoo queen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s starting to become very evident that a black cloud hangs over Sunrise. PublishedNovember 20, 2025 6:50 PM&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-304286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}