The State Of Florida Is Ruining Hockey, And It's High Time We Do Something About It
Bruce Bennett. Getty Images.All across America right now are kids who are finishing up kindergarten. They're 5-6 years old. They can walk, they can talk, they can formulate sentences, and are potty trained for the most part. The one thing that all of those kids have in common is that they've never been alive in a world where a team from Florida wasn't represented in the Stanley Cup Final.
Last night the Florida Panthers made it 6 straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final for teams from the Sunshine State. 2020, 2021, and 2022 for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Followed up by 2023, 2024, and now 2025 for the Florida Panthers. You could say it's coincidence. You could say it's just been good fortune. You could say it's two organizations who had been building towards this success for years.
Or you could call it what it is, which is absolute flippin' bullshit.
Listen--I get that there are always going to be destination cities and states in professional sports. Teams from markets like New York and LA are always going to have a better opportunity to attract free agents because of the glitz and glam that comes with living there. Teams in warmer weather are usually going to have a better opportunity to attract free agents because athletes would rather be able to live on a beach in Florida than dealing with the pitch black winter in Winnipeg for 9 months a year. No shit guys are going to prefer to live in Florida than most other places in North America. It is what it is.
But that's only half of the equation.
For the longest time, the thought was that it was impossible to win the Stanley Cup with a player on your salary making $10+ million per year. Two years ago that changed when Jack Eichel and the Vegas Golden Knights won the Cup against Florida. And once again last year, the Panthers won the Cup with Barkov and Bobrovsky both making $10 million. For most teams, that means they're filling up the rest of the roster with complete shit. They're going bargain bin for the rest of the roster. Edmonton got lucky with a guy like Zach Hyman becoming the best $5.5M signing ever. But once you get past McDavid and Draisaitl, you have an ECHL roster.
But teams like the Florida Panthers have the luxury of signing guys for below their market value, because they're not getting railed by the long dick of big government. They don't have a bunch of slime ball politicians taking half their paycheck away from them. Sam Reinhart can sign for under $9M in Florida after putting up 94 points because all of that money is going directly to his account. If he was still in Buffalo, he'd practically be broke with that salary.
Clearly Florida and Tampa have a huge competitive advantage over every other team in the Eastern Conference. They're the only teams in the East that don't have to deal with state income tax. They're always going to be able to put together the best roster in the East, and we might see one of those teams in the Cup Final every year for the next decade. Or the NHL can wake up and do something about it. Do you change the salary cap to find some sort of way to even out the playing field? I don't know, I'm not a numbers guy. All I know is that as a fan of a team in the Eastern Conference not in the state of Florida, it's completely fucked. Guys like Nikki Smokes shouldn't be allowed to walk around getting to watch their team in the Cup Final every year just because they live in a lawless state. It's driving me insane.