It’s the season of gift giving. Many hockey fans will wake up Christmas morning to see NHL goodies good old Santa put under their tree and stuck in their stocking. Hopefully he got the memo and doesn’t send any New York Rangers fans Kaapo Kakko jerseys. If he does, maybe he got a nice discount on them.
A few Florida Panthers fans got the ultimate Christmas gift this past weekend, as if being reigning Stanley Cup champions wasn’t enough. 158 lucky and dedicated Panthers fans are what the team calls “legacy” season ticket members who have had season tickets since the franchise’s first season back in 1993-1994. They’ve been through a lot. Times are good now, but there were also decades of futility, like the playoff drought from 2000-2012 and not winning a playoff series from 1996 to 2022 (which still stands as an NHL record).
These few and proud Panthers fans got the ultimate Christmas gift as the team gave them their own Stanley Cup rings this past weekend. Other players and team staff also received their rings this weekend, but the coolest story has to be these long time South Florida hockey fans getting perhaps one of the most generous gifts a team can give its fans. It was announced the “legacy” members would get replica rings back during the Panthers banner raising in early October, but the fans finally got their own bling right before Christmas.
Generally NHL teams are allowed to give out championship rings to whoever they want. When the St. Louis Blues won the 2019 Stanley Cup, they gave inspirational super fan Laila Anderson her own ring as an emotional symbol of their friendship. When the Washington Capitals won the 2018 Stanley Cup team owner Ted Leonsis gave away a reported 500 championship rings.
The Panthers are in a unique situation to do this. As one of the NHL’s younger franchise’s it’s easy to have a small and exclusive group of “legacy” ticket members. We don’t think any Original Six franchise could have such a club (fun fact, since we checked, season tickets in North American professional sports were introduced in the late 1800’s). For reference of just how small this group of fans is, it’s even smaller than the fabled “334 club” of fans who braves a blizzard to go to a lowly attended New Jersey Devils game in 1987.
More importantly it’s just a nice gesture of appreciation for the fans. For all the years of hearing “Panthers have no fans” while they were at the bottom of the NHL standings and literally curtaining off empty sections of seats it’s nice for their loyalty to be rewarded. Congrats Panthers “legacy” members, you deserve this.