SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Panthers' Stanley Cup championship festivities have included an all-night celebration at a popular beach bar; crowd surfing, pole climbing and impromptu karaoke at a Miami nightclub; a Brad Marchand appearance at Dairy Queen; a few team dinners and a boat ride.
That's just so far. They insist they've got more in them.
“We’re not toning it down," defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. "We just won two Stanley Cups in a row. We deserve to have a good time.”
The Panthers also partied hard after winning the franchise's first title a year ago. But some players have described those days as a surreal whirlwind of first-time experiences. This time around, the celebrations are different, as the reality of what they accomplished set in.
“There’s a different feeling to it,” coach Paul Maurice said during the team's exit interviews on Saturday. “Last year was more of a dream. ... That’s the right word. It was a dream come true. It was euphoric. This year, it was an achievement. It was hard. It was hard all year. It was hard at camp. There were just so many places that if we had broken at that point or failed we would've all understood — 'OK, we did our best. We just couldn’t get it done.' We never let that happen.”
The coaches' celebrations, Maurice noted, have been much more subdued compared to last year: They had their first post-championship dinner as a staff Friday night. They joined some players on a boat ride.
“I haven't had a hangover yet,” Maurice said, “so way ahead of where I was last year.”
Maurice heard about his players' celebrations from his wife, who has shown him a few viral social media posts here and there.
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said they're giving themselves “permission” to celebrate more freely this year because they have already been through the experience.
“And don’t get me wrong, it’s still amazing,” he added, “but now everyone knows how to sit back a little and enjoy it, because last year was so hectic. Like it happened to you for the first time ever, and you had been dreaming about it for so long.”
The Panthers in fact celebrated so hard that the Stanley Cup itself got a little banged up. The silver chalice that has endured bumps and bruises throughout its 131-year existence was cracked at the bottom of the bowl the night of Florida's clinching Game 6 win over Edmonton, though Barkov noted the team hasn't received any harsh reprimands from the keepers of the Cup or the Hockey Hall of Fame.
“I think they’ve seen worse,” he quipped. “I think every year they have to fix some part of it. But yeah, don’t be stupid. Don’t take it to the ocean, stuff like that. We should know the rules by now.”
The Panthers' championship parade will be on Fort Lauderdale Beach on Sunday — one of their last opportunities to celebrate together before the players disperse for the summer and general manager Bill Zito begins an important offseason.
Free agency begins July 1, and while a good chunk of Florida's core — including Barkov and stars Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart — are already under long-term contracts, a few key contributors are set for free agency in Marchand, Ekblad and playoff MVP Sam Bennett.
All three players have expressed their desire to stay in Florida.
Bennett, who led all players with 15 postseason goals, said at the Miami nightclub E11even that he's not leaving. Marchand has publicly petitioned Zito to give him a contract.
Ekblad, who was drafted by the Panthers in 2014, said Saturday that his representation has had conversations with the Panthers on a potential deal, but “nothing material yet.”
“I've spent 11 years here,” Ekblad said. “It's home, and I expect it to be home."
Tkachuk, who will play in his fourth season with the Panthers next year, said he believes Florida's window to compete for titles remains wide open, and he hopes to compete with as many pieces from this year's run as possible.
“You're going to have a different roster each and every year," he said, "but hopefully the core of guys, we can continue building. With that being said, we've got some unbelievable players that are up for contracts that I hope they get every single cent they can because that's what you want for your best friends. It's time to cash in for some of those boys. Hopefully it's here.”
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Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice kisses the Stanley Cup trophy after defeating the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Final Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Florida Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (72) and teammates celebrate after defeating the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final in Sunrise, Fla., Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of nurses at some of New York City's biggest hospitals could go on strike Monday during a severe flu season, three years after a similar walkout forced some of the same medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.
The looming strike could impact operations at several of the city’s major private hospitals, including Mount Sinai in Manhattan, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Nearly 15,000 nurses could walk off the job early Monday if a deal is not reached, amounting to the largest nurses strike in city history, according to Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nurses Association. As of Sunday morning, little progress had been made at the bargaining table, Hagans said. A vast majority of the union's nurses voted to authorize the strike last month.
Like the 2023 labor fight, this year's dispute involves a complicated array of issues, claims, counterclaims and hospital-by-hospital particulars. Once again, staffing levels are a major flashpoint: Nurses say the big-budget medical centers are refusing to commit to — or even backsliding on — provisions for manageable, safe workloads.
This time, the nurses' union also wants guardrails on hospitals using artificial intelligence, plus more workplace security measures. A gunman strode into Mount Sinai in November, and a man with a sharp object barricaded himself in a Brooklyn hospital room this week; both men ultimately were killed by police.
The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they've made strides in staffing since 2023. Some of them suggest the union's demands, taken as a whole, are far too expensive.
Scores of nurses rallied Friday in Manhattan, insisting their primary concern was proper caregiving and accusing the medical centers — whose top executives make millions of dollars a year — of greed and intransigence.
“My hospital tries to cut corners on staffing every day, and then they try to fight historic gains we made three years ago,” said Sophie Boland, a pediatric intensive care nurse in the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system.
The hospitals, meanwhile, have called the union’s strike threat “reckless.” They vowed in a statement Thursday to “do whatever is necessary to minimize disruptions.”
Hagans, the union president, has also stressed that patients should not delay care during a potential strike.
Still, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul expressed concern that a strike could affect patient care, urging both sides on Friday “to stay at the table and get a deal done.”
Mount Sinai has hired over 1,000 temporary nurses and held preparatory drills for a strike that could affect its 1,100-bed main hospital and two affiliates — Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West — with about 500 beds each.
NewYork-Presbyterian said it also had arranged for temporary nurses but, if the strike happens, some patients might be moved to new rooms or advised to transfer to another facility. Montefiore posted a message assuring patients that appointments would be kept.
The same union mounted a three-day strike at the Mount Sinai flagship facility and Montefiore in 2023, when nurses emphasized their sacrifices during the exhausting, frightening height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national nurse staffing crisis that followed.
The walkout prompted those hospitals to postpone non-emergency surgeries, tell many ambulances to go elsewhere and transfer some intensive-care infants and other patients. Temporary nurses and even administrators with clinical backgrounds were tapped to fill in, but some patients noticed longer waits and more sparsely staffed wards.
The strike ended with an agreement on raises totaling 19% over three years and staffing improvements, including the possibility of extra pay if nurses had to work short-handed.
Now, the union says, the hospitals are retreating from those guarantees and falling short on other promises.
Montefiore, for example, agreed to “make all reasonable efforts” to stop keeping some emergency room patients in hallways while they wait for space to open up in other wards. Yet three years later, nurses still scramble to treat “hallway patients,” Montefiore intensive care nurse Michelle Gonzalez said Friday.
Montefiore has suggested it's made some progress: The hospital told elected officials in a letter in October that there has been a 35% reduction in the time it takes from emergency admission to a clinical unit bed.
Overall, the hospitals say they have greatly reduced nursing job vacancy rates in the last three years, and Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Irving University Medical Center say they also have added hundreds of nursing positions.
In recent days, several smaller hospitals — including multiple Northwell Health facilities on Long Island — averted potential walkouts by striking deals or making what the union viewed as adequate progress.
FILE - A medical worker transports a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital, April 1, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
