SUNRISE, Fla. — No home game in South Florida sports history has weighed more. Felt heavier.

And all of that weight lifted off the Florida Panthers late Monday night in the Sunrise home arena filled with the sounds of rapture, and relief. The weight lifted because so did the NHL’s Stanley Cup championship trophy for the first time in the club’s 30-season history.

With a 2-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers in the winner-take-all Game 7 of the Final, a franchise officially announced itself as a force in hockey. The team from the tropics, from the suburb once best known for a shopping mall, had arrived.

Across the decades and leagues in Greater Miami’s sports history, no game played in our own backyard, ever, had presented such a stark, all-or-nothing extreme of unprecedented joy or epic humiliation — no in-between.

That sounds like hyperbole. It might be understatement.

The Panthers on Monday night would raise the Cup as first-time NHL champions ... or fail and be sports’ new face of choking, of blowing it, of having everything in front of you, including your home fans, and letting everybody down.

Nobody said life was fair ... sports included.

“That’s what makes this whole thing awesome,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice had said.

Awesome if you win, awful if you don’t, and either reality on you for eternity. Defining you. Lifting you up forever, or branding you with permanent regret.

The Panthers beat more than Edmonton on this night.

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