SUNRISE, Fla. — A few weeks ago, Bill Zito made a call to Brian Skrudland, the heart-and-soul checking center who helped guide the Florida Panthers to their first Stanley Cup Final appearance in just their third year of existence in 1996, to offer him two tickets to Game 3 of the team’s series against the Edmonton Oilers.
Skrudland has lived in Calgary, three hours south of Edmonton, since he retired, and Zito, the Panthers’ president of hockey operations and general manager, thought it would be nice to have the beloved “Screwy” at the game.
“And of course, being me, I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Bill, I’ve got two son-in-laws, as well as my son. If there happens to be two more tickets around, I’ll take them,’” Skrudland said, laughing. “So Bill was so kind to set us up with four tickets, and man alive, what a hockey game, and man alive, what a hockey game by their captain.”
Barkov assisted on Sam Reinhart’s goal and scored the eventual winner that night as the Panthers took a 3-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Final — a series that looked all but done at that point.
That was before the Oilers reeled off three consecutive wins to force a winner-take-all Game 7 on Monday — a collapse that would have been the worst in league history had Barkov not played a huge role in holding Connor McDavid to no points for a second consecutive game in Monday’s Game 7 triumph.
This came after a Game 6 in which Barkov was by far Florida’s best player, scoring the lone goal on a highlight-reel move and having another overturned because Sam Reinhart was a hair offside.
Silky stuff from the Panthers captain. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/5HPm5LrTCf
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 22, 2024
Now, all that stress and pressure of three straight losses is long forgotten. Barkov became the first Finnish-born captain to guide his team to the NHL’s pinnacle Monday night and the first Panthers player to lift the Cup.
“It’s a great honor,” Barkov said. “Finland is a huge, huge hockey country and there have been lots of great captains from Finland.”
If not for McDavid’s record-breaking postseason and the fact he scored eight points in two games to help the Oilers climb back in the series, Barkov would have been the first Finnish-born Conn Smythe winner. He received 15 second-place votes on the 17 ballots cast. McDavid received 16 first-place votes.
Barkov is the 10th Panthers captain in history and first to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup.
woke up a Stanley Cup Champion pic.twitter.com/fbx8MyxZEB
— Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) June 25, 2024
Skrudland, the team’s first captain and first to guide Florida to a Cup Final, has a soft spot for Barkov, and not only because of the success he’s led the team to.
Skrudland, who won two Stanley Cups in his 15-year career and went to five Stanley Cup Finals, always took care of the defensive side of the puck, just like Barkov does. He was always tasked with going up against the opposing team’s top players, just like Barkov is. And he was part of the Panthers’ staff as director of player development when Dale Tallon and Scott Luce selected Barkov second in the 2013 NHL Draft.
Aleksander Barkov was picked No. 2 by the Panthers in the 2013 NHL Draft. (Mike Stobe / Getty Images)
Remember the year Nathan MacKinnon went No. 1 to Colorado and most felt the Panthers would take Seth Jones or Jonathan Drouin second and some criticized them for not?
“It was a true surprise,” Skrudland said. “Dale Tallon and Scott Luce did a hell of a job keeping that under wraps until the day of the draft. And then they pulled up all these videos of this kid, and it was like, ‘Oh, my good lord. Look at this, and look at this.’ It was highlight-reel stuff, and we thought, ‘OK, maybe we didn’t need MacKinnon.’ I mean, if there was going to be a replacement for Nathan MacKinnon, you couldn’t get any better than this fella.”
Watching now, Skrudland can’t help but think back to what Barkov was like as a rookie and how far he has come.
“The biggest change in Aleksander since is that he’s really taken on the North American-style game,” Skrudland said. “He’s one of the best, in all positions — a complete 200-foot player. The nasty side of Aleksander Barkov is his willingness to take a hit, to make a play, sacrifice his body on the (penalty kill). He does it all, both offensively and defensively. And we knew, of course, that he was very capable of that.
“He’s not a small man either, so he earns the ice he gets and just works his ass off. So composed and such a great skater, such a great puck handler. All the assets of an MVP type of a guy, year in and year out.”
In January, Zito flew Skrudland and his wife, Lana, to Florida for ’90s Night against the Los Angeles Kings. Barkov invited Skrudland down after the game to say hello and take a picture with him and Kings captain Anze Kopitar.
“He’s just such a kind guy,” Skrudland said. “I remember him as a rookie. He was so quiet. So when they won the Eastern Conference, I was elated to see the way he was acting at the podium with Matthew Tkachuk. Having fun and showing off his personality and smile and that joy. He’s matured into a wonderful, wonderful player and person. You can’t get a better person to captain this franchise.”
Brian Skrudland drops the ceremonial puck with Aleksander Barkov and Anze Kopitar in January. (Eliot J. Schechter / Getty Images)
Barkov’s impact is felt well beyond the stats. Not that the stats don’t show it, too.
He scored 80 points in 73 games in the 2023-24 regular season and won his second Selke Trophy as the league’s best defensive forward. He had eight goals and tied for the team lead with 22 points in 24 playoff games, collected while also drawing the Panthers’ toughest assignments. In four rounds, Barkov matched up largely against Nikita Kucherov, David Pastrnak, Mika Zibanejad, McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Those stars had no goals and five assists against Barkov at five-on-five.
Simply, Barkov was Florida’s best player in the playoffs. He’s scored four game-winning goals and had eight multi-point games. He was a huge part of the Panthers’ penalty kill that went 21-for-24 against the Oilers and finished second in the playoffs at 88 percent.
He is Florida’s all-time leader in playoff games (71), assists (40), points (59), power-play points (18), multi-assist games (nine) and multi-point games (17).
There’s a pride in wearing the “C” for any franchise. And that pride is returned by past Panthers watching the current championship team. Along with Skrudland, The Athletic reached out to former Panthers captains Scott Mellanby, Olli Jokinen and Ed Jovanovski to get their view of what Barkov is doing and his place in Panthers history.
Scott Mellanby was the Panthers’ second captain. (Robert Laberge / Getty Images)
Scott Mellanby
The second captain in Panthers history, Mellanby is the man who triggered the 1995-96 “Year of the Rat” when he slapped a rat against the locker room wall at Miami Arena then went out to score twice in a win over the Calgary Flames for what became known as a “rat trick.”
Mellanby ranks fourth in Panthers history with 157 goals and fifth with 354 points. Now a senior adviser with the St. Louis Blues, here’s what he said about Barkov:
“He is one of the best defensive forces in the league, and he’s offensive, too. Reminds me a little bit of Kopitar in Kopitar’s prime. Maybe better. Maybe another level. But just a phenomenal player. At the end of the day, the thing to me is I was a good leader. A really good leader. I wasn’t a great player. I was a good player. But when your best players are your best leaders, because they come to the rink every day and they’re great pros, everybody has no choice, no excuse but to follow.
“That’s what I saw with Barkov. Like leadership, to me, it’s not about giving speeches. Occasionally, yeah, you’re going to kick a few guys in the ass or pat a few guys on the back. Sometimes you’ve got to give guys a hug and ask about their families. But when your best players are your top leaders, that’s when you have a chance to win. And that’s what this guy is.
“The Panthers have everything. They’ve got talent, but they’ve become about character and compete and grit. I think the one thing Bill Zito and his staff have done a great job of, and I go back a few years, they brought in guys Patric Hornqvist, they brought in Radko Gudas, they brought in competitive, competitive bastards. They brought in Tkachuk, and to me — I don’t want this to sound the wrong way because I’ve always been a Barkov fan — but he’s gotten to another level of competitiveness that I don’t think five years ago he had.
“He’s never going to be a guy that runs around looking for hits, but he engages now much more in the battle than he ever did. And not that he was not in the battle — don’t get me wrong — but he’s taken it to another level. And I think that’s a result of playing with guys like Gudas and Hornqvist and Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe. When your top guys start playing that way and doing that, everyone follows suit, and it’s just tripled down there.”
Olli Jokinen helped Aleksander Barkov acclimate early in his NHL career. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
Olli Jokinen
After one year of Pavel Bure and Paul Laus serving as co-captains and then the Panthers having no captain in 2002-03, Jokinen was named the third full-time captain in Panthers history before the 2003-04 season. Jokinen became one of the best goal scorers in Panthers history and ranks third in goals and points behind Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau with 188 goals and 419 points, respectively, in 567 games.
After three years coaching Jukurit in the Finnish Elite League and being named coach of the year in 2021-22, Jokinen is entering his first year coaching Timra in the Swedish Hockey League with the hope it’ll be a stepping stone toward one day returning to North America to coach in the NHL.
After his 17-year NHL player career, Jokinen retired in Parkland, Fla., and got to know Barkov, his Finnish countryman, well. In fact, when playing in Winnipeg, Jokinen once got a call from a teenaged Barkov after he made the Panthers.
“He said he was too young to lease a car and asked if he could borrow one of my cars,” Jokinen said, laughing.
They were also teammates in the 2014 Olympics until Barkov got injured two games in.
“Before that, I knew the guy, I heard about the kid because I followed a little bit of Finnish League, played against his father (Alexander), and there was a lot of talk, especially early in the career, comparing him to his father,” Jokinen said. “A lot of similarities, but obviously the kid has been taking off big-time now.
“There’s not many players you can compare to Barkov. Maybe he’s Florida’s (Patrice) Bergeron, but not to disrespect Bergeron, he’s almost like a better version of Bergeron. I think with Barky, it’s that offensive talent that sets him apart. If he was more selfless, he would win the scoring (title), too. He could be a 150-point guy, but he chooses not to be that guy because he can help the team other ways. Playing the game the right way and stuff like that.
“It’s been nice to see his growth as a person, too. He’s become a better leader and is becoming a little bit more open about it in the media. He’s a very private person — very, very private guy and you really have to know him.”
It’s the humility that blows Jokinen away. Reporters have learned that if you want to shut Barkov down, you ask him about himself and how good he is.
“He’s never going to do anything that benefits him; he does things that benefit the team,” Jokinen said. “And you have a lot of team guys and team players and stuff like that, but very rarely you have a young guy entering the league, when he came as an 18-year-old, being so responsible without the puck and playing both ways immediately in high traffic. So that tells me that the father probably had a big influence for him growing up: teaching about the game, the fundamentals, what this game is all about. End of the day it’s about winning and people want winners.
“His Hockey IQ, that’s his biggest asset because he understands what he needs to do in that exact moment, that shift to get the job done, that it benefits the team. And you don’t have many of those guys. Just look at the Reinhart goal in Game 3. Barkov generates the takeaway from (Evan) Bouchard with that active stick. As a coach, my requirement is that every player should generate two takeaways every period, which becomes six per player, which becomes a lot of takeaways per game if everyone was able to get to that goal. But Barky, he generates four or five takeaways per period. That’s something that is unbelievable.”
Jokinen is proud that Barkov, who hails from his native country, is the player who has broken all of his team records.
“To have a Finnish guy on the team I care the most about in the NHL lead the team and play the game the right way, it’s amazing,” Jokinen said. “He’s not just the top player on the Panthers but one of the top players in the whole league. And that’s just amazing, obviously very proud.”
Ed Jovanovski says Aleksander Barkov’s game is perfectly suited for Paul Maurice’s system. (Jen Fuller /Getty Images)
Ed Jovanovski
Named the seventh captain in Panthers history during his second stint with the organization, Jovanovski was the No. 1 pick in the 1994 draft and a rookie nicknamed “Jovo Cop” on the 1995-96 Cup Final team.
Once a teammate of Barkov’s, Jovanovski also watches Barkov all season as a studio analyst on Bally Sports Florida.
“What I love about Barkov is I’ve got to believe that he’s at his stall before every game,” Jovanovski said. “It’s just his drive. First guy on the ice in practice. Last guy off. Working at things that you don’t see guys really work on in practice. Always approachable, and I think that’s a key thing because you’re speaking for the team in a lot of sense. You’ve got to deal with the coach. You’re going in there, you’re expressing, ‘Hey, listen. The guys are feeling like this.’
“And so you’ve got to have that good communication, and that’s where Barky has grown. He’s a pretty shy guy coming in, expectedly, coming from Finland and the language barrier. So I think that’s what’s really helped him become a great leader. And then let’s not forget the most important thing: going on the ice and being, on most nights, right at the top of the class as far as leading the way, not only scoring points but playing on the other side of the puck, which is not always fun.
“I think (Paul) Maurice’s systems really suited Barky and was right in his wheelhouse on how you got to play. … When you’re battling against top lines each and every night and having that crazy matchup with facing the top two defensemen of opposing teams and not complaining, and putting your head down and going to work, that says a lot about your leader.
“It’s hard to see your captain and your leader go out there and pay the price and do a lot of the heavy lifting and then not be inspired to follow suit.”
OUR CAPTAIN pic.twitter.com/pP3sobEt5t
— Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) June 25, 2024
(Top photo of Aleksander Barkov: Jim Rassol / USA Today)
