Since winning the Stanley Cup, Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour has spoken about the motivation and inspiration that goes with it.
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The Canes, other than captain Jordan Staal and forward Will Carrier, had not won a Cup and were driven to win last season. That was the motivation. And the experience of doing it, Brind’Amour believes, was so inspiring that the players badly want to do it again.
To which Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice can relate.
Maurice, once the Canes coach, guided the Panthers to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup title in 2024. After much merrymaking — thousands of fans wildly celebrating at the beach — and the passing around of the Cup for a few months, the Panthers came back and did it again in 2025, going back-to-back.
Stanley Cup hangover? What hangover?
“Oh, not a problem,” Maurice said this week in an interview after a preseason game against Carolina. “We came back to the rink and were ready to go. We didn’t experience that and other teams have. We never talked about it or gave it any credence.
“I think once you get a taste of that, you’re far more likely to believe you can do it again and want it again. I think what you have is a belief all year that you can do it.”
The Hurricanes, with Brind’Amour as the team captain, had that belief after winning the Cup in 2006, a first for the franchise. But in a season beset with injuries, the Canes did not qualify for the playoffs in 2006-2007, a massive disappointment.
The Panthers hope to be the first stumbling block for the Hurricanes this season. After missing the playoffs and dealing with their own spate of injuries — captain Aleksander Barkov was out all year — the Panthers come to Raleigh on Tuesday for the opening game of the 2026-27 season.
After twice raising Stanley Cup banners, the Panthers will first watch as the Canes put one up at the Lenovo Center before taking the ice to get things started.
Going back-to-back hasn’t been uncommon the past two decades: Pittsburgh did it in 2016 and 2017, and Tampa Bay in 2021 and 2022, before the Panthers’ run.
Not that it was a smooth ride for the Panthers in 2025, said Maurice, who coached the Hurricanes to the 2002 Stanley Cup Final and later returned as Canes coach a few years after the Canes had won the Cup in 2006.
“We found it was new ground for us the entire year,” Maurice said.
The Panthers, after winning the Atlantic Division with 110 points in 2023-24, finished third in the division the next year with 98. Forward Matthew Tkachuk, who had tormented the Canes a few times, was injured during the 4 Nations Face-Off event. There was a lull in March before the playoffs began.
And there was the trip to Finland, and the aftermath of it.
The Panthers traveled to Tampere for a pair of games against the Dallas Stars in early November. They won both, but soon after the return lost six of seven games, falling to 12-9-1 for the season.
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“It was a difficult schedule for us,” Maurice said. “We came back from Finland and we played 10 of 11 playoff teams. It was more a time-zone thing, a jet-lag thing, that we had to get out of our system. After that, we were all right.”
That’s something for the Hurricanes to keep in mind this season — they go to Helsinki, Finland in mid-November to play the Seattle Kraken in a pair of games.
Maurice believes his team started to bounce back in November 2024 — against the Hurricanes.
In a home-and-home, back-to-back set to end the month, the Panthers took a 6-3 win in Raleigh and then notched a 6-0 shutout at home.
“We kind of took it out of the garage in those two games,” Maurice said. “After that, we were all right. We were a pretty good team and then we had some pockets where we were a very good team.”
The Panthers lost five in a row in late March and early April, not that Maurice was worried. Not after adding veteran forward Brad Marchand and defenseman Seth Jones before the NHL trade deadline.
Talk about home-run swings. General manager Bill Zito pulled Marchand out of Boston after 16 years with the Bruins. He brought in Jones in a trade with Chicago.
“A great shot in the arm,” Maurice said of the moves.
The Panthers began each playoff series on the road — at Tampa Bay, Toronto, and then Carolina in the Eastern Conference final, which Florida won in five games.
The Stanley Cup final began in Edmonton with an overtime loss. But the Panthers won Game 2 in double overtime — Marchand with the winning goal — and the series in six games in defeating and deflating the Oilers for a second straight season.
“We came out of that trade deadline, and we knew we had a chance,” Maurice said. “That just fired everybody up. We were so excited.”
Come Tuesday, it will be game on: Hurricanes and Panthers, the two most recent Stanley Cup champions. A new season begins.
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Or as Brind’Amour put it, it’s about trying to “climb the mountain” again.
This story was originally published September 27, 2026 at 7:00 AM.