Former Capitals Nate Schmidt and Vitek Vanecek lift Stanley Cup for first time with Florida Panthers: ‘This is why you play the game’

Nate Schmidt and Vitek Vanecek are Stanley Cup champions. And for Schmidt, the victory comes after heartbreak earlier in his career.

The 12-year NHL veteran previously saw two of his former teams, the Washington Capitals (2018) and the Vegas Golden Knights (2023), win a championship almost immediately after he departed their rosters. Schmidt lost his lone prior appearance in the league’s final series with the Golden Knights against the Capitals in 2018 after he was selected in the Expansion Draft.

The 33-year-old was the second Florida Panthers player to lift the prestigious trophy after captain Aleksander Barkov chose to give the team’s first-time winners the glory first in their repeat championship victory.

After Schmidt got the Cup, the best trophy in sports made its way to all of the other first-time winners on the Panthers, including Vitek Vanecek, Seth Jones, Tomas Nosek, AJ Greer, and Jesper Boqvist.

“It just shows you how unique this hockey club is, that they’ve handed the trophy to every first-time player,” Wayne Gretzky said on the TNT broadcast. “I thought (Brad) Marchand would be the first guy to get it, but they went completely opposite direction and made sure the guys who have never won it before got to lift the Stanley Cup first, and that just shows you the uniqueness of their team.”

“The first guys to touch the Stanley Cup were the guys who hadn’t won it before, and some of those players never played in a game, but they’re all part of it,” head coach Paul Maurice added to TNT’s Jackie Redmond. “That’s the Barkov effect in our room. He loves everybody. Everybody is part of it.”

With a dominant 5-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on home ice in Game 6, the Panthers successfully defended their Cup win from last year, becoming the 19th team in NHL history to repeat as champions. Sam Reinhart scored four goals in the Cup-clinching win, sending the Oilers home empty-handed two years in a row.

Schmidt played on Florida’s third defense pairing throughout the postseason, matched up with fellow veteran blueliner Dmitry Kulikov. In 23 playoff appearances for the Panthers, Schmidt recorded 12 points (3g, 9a). He skated 16:15 average time on ice per game and was a fixture on the team’s second power-play unit.

“This is why you play the game,” Schmidt told Sportsnet’s David Amber postgame. “It’s amazing to be able to be here. I felt like I had a chance when I was in Vegas, but we fell short, and you just never know when you’re going to be back.”

“I can’t even tell you what that lap is like when you have that thing,” he continued. “It’s amazing. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

The Panthers signed Schmidt to a one-year, $800k contract in free agency last summer. He joined the defending champions after three seasons with the Winnipeg Jets, one season with the Vancouver Canucks, three seasons with the Golden Knights, and four seasons with the Capitals.

Vanecek is the lone other former Capitals player on Florida’s roster, winning his first Cup in his fifth NHL season. The 29-year-old netminder, a Capitals’ second-round pick in the 2014 NHL Draft, served as Sergei Bobrovsky’s backup for the entirety of the playoffs, never seeing the team’s crease once. Though he was named the Panthers’ player of the game in the locker room after Game 5 for being a “great teammate.”

Vanecek also got involved in multiple staredown matchups with Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner during warmups before the Cup Final games. Skinner went 1-3 with a 3.97 goals-against average and a .861 save percentage in the series.