Brotherhood and experience: How the Panthers finally won a Stanley Cup

And they got better. The roster had more depth. The players were another year wiser. And now, the core had been battle-tested. They were cognizant of what needed to be done and how they needed to do it.

They did it together, as one team — anything individual was secondary in thought.

“Brotherhood,” Barkov said. “We love each other here. We come every single day to the rink and know we’re going to have the best time of the day. Working really hard at practices, games, whatever it is. You come here and you see every single guy sitting next to you is going to work really hard.”

Added Tkachuk: “You can’t teach experience. You can watch as much video as you want. You can to talk to as many people. You’ve got to go through it. We went through it last year and I think we gained a lot from it. This year, we came ready to go — and now we’re champs.”

The experience of Florida’s core has been pivotal. Over the past two seasons, the group has played 210 games. They bonded and pushed each other over the extended playoff runs.

“They are the fabric, they are the core, they are the identity,” Maurice said. “Their personalities are the room. The distance this franchise has covered over three or four years is based on the distance their games have covered, the leadership that they have shown and then grown into. They are the reason that we’re here.”

But how the core was built starts at the top and the four-year building process that president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito orchestrated.

Only four players on Florida’s roster — Barkov, Ekblad, goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and forward Eetu Luostarinen — are holdovers from before Zito’s arrival.

He made big splashes, namely with the Tkachuk signing. He found diamonds in the rough — defenseman Gustav Forsling and forward Carter Verhaeghe come to mind. He acquired former first-round picks like Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart who hadn’t hit their stride and watched them flourish after a change of scenery.

This past offseason, Zito signed nine players to fill roster voids and then made a pair of trades to get veteran forwards Vladimir Tarasenko and Kyle Okposo at the trade deadline to put the final touches on a championship roster.

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