Stanley Cup Goes South. Again.

The Florida Panthers should have won the NHL Stanley Cup a week ago when they led the Edmonton Oilers 3-0. But the Oilers won the next three games to tie the Final and go to a Game 7. The Panthers won the Cup Monday, avoiding the embarrassment of being only the second team to lose it after taking a 3-0 lead. The Detroit Red Wings were that team in 1942, losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Oilers were the latest Canadian-based NHL team since 1993 to lose the Cup. But Connor McDavid, the league's best current player not to win Lord Stanley, got a nice consolation prize in being awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP. A prize McDavid declined to accept in front of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and a celebrating Florida crowd. Can you blame him?

In this decade, the Stanley Cup has resided in the NHL's warm weather outposts of Tampa Bay and Las Vegas. With the Panthers claiming the Cup for the first time in franchise history (they date back to the 1990's), one of the world's oldest championship trophies is again a Florida resident. Canada is so jealous.