Ultimate Captain: Aleksander Barkov Went Around His Neighborhood At 5am Banging On Everyone's Front Door To Bring Them The Stanley Cup
The best captains always find a way to treat everybody in the organization the same. It doesn't matter if you're the highest paid player on the roster, or someone on the ticket sales team. They are going to treat each and every single person in the organization with the same amount of respect. That's how you build a team that is willing to go to war with each other. That's how you build a team that can battle through playoff series after playoff series. Everybody can get a "C" slapped on their sweater because they're the best player on the team and it's the easy, obvious pick. But the best captains are the ones who would be just as great of leaders with or without an extra letter stitched onto the front of their jersey.
Sasha Barkov is one of the best captains in the sport. He knows that it's not just about the guys in the locker room. It's not just about the coaches and upper management. It's not just about the scouts, and the video guys, and the equipment staff, and everyone who works on the business side of things. But it's about the fans as well. It takes everybody to win back-to-back Stanley Cups. Every single person played a role in getting the Panthers to where they are today. Some roles are massively large like Barkov captaining the team. Other roles are minuscule, like cheering on the team from the stands. But it takes everybody doing their role to do something that only 6 teams have done in the past 40 years by going back-to-back.
Imagine being Barky's neighbor. It's 5 in the morning. Obviously you were up all night watching the Panthers take down the Oilers in game 6 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. You were most likely having some drinks with some friends, and the celebrations extended well into the night. The only issue is that you're not a professional hockey player, so you have to wake up for work in the morning. So you finally get to sleep, but you know that 6am alarm clock is going to smack you directly in the dick. Only for that Ring alarm to come an hour earlier with Sasha Barkov standing at your front door with the Cup.
It's a great way to wake up and have your morning coffee, don't get me wrong. The first European player in NHL history to ever captain a team to two Stanley Cups, standing outside your door with the greatest trophy in all of sports. There are surely worse ways to wake up than that. But at the same time...part of you has to be at least a little pissed off. At least the smallest corner of your brain has to be saying "fuckin' Barky". He's getting changed to head over to the Elbo Room, and now you're going to some meeting running on 2 hours of sleep. I guess if your presentation sucks, at least you can pull up the Ring footage to give yourself a great excuse.
Aleksander Barkov, man. What a beauty.