For the Panthers, the day the Stanley Cup was won was somehow normal and marked by confidence

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — A new season for the Florida Panthers has arrived, after the shortest possible offseason that was spent celebrating a Stanley Cup championship.

What happened on the ice on the night of June 24 was something that neither the Panthers nor the Edmonton Oilers will ever forget. Panthers 2, Oilers 1 was the final, and Florida was the team that skated off with hockey's most-prized chalice.

It was a game like none other in Panthers history, where the franchise was not only playing in the ultimate game for a title but was trying to fend off what would have been a historical collapse after winning the first three games of the title series and then losing the next three.

But what was the day of Game 7 like? The Associated Press asked five members of the organization what they recalled about the pregame hours on June 24. The answers were all different, though shared a common thread — there was a calmness and a belief that the Cup was going to be won by Florida that night.

Panthers hockey operations president and general manager Bill Zito had some is-this-it? feelings going into Games 4, 5 and 6 — the three games that Florida lost in the series.

Facing championship or collapse, the morning of June 24 came and Zito was somehow at peace.

“The remarkable sense that it was an unremarkable day,” is how he described it on Monday night, when the Panthers got their championship rings in a private ceremony.

The daytime hours of June 24 may have indeed been unremarkable. The nighttime hours, of course, were not. Zito, in his three-piece suit watching from a suite, was using all the body English he could muster in the final moments to help will the Panthers to victory. The game was tense. The afterparty was relief. But the day, the hours leading up to Game 7, were somehow like any other.

“It was a normal day and it seemed right,” Zito said. “That’s what I remember.”

June 24 wasn't the difficult day for Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. He felt his mind wandering on June 22 and June 23, the two off days that separated Game 6 and Game 7.

He knew the last day of the season would bring either devastation or elation. There were no other options. And Bobrovsky — who had an unforgettable save in Round 1 of the playoffs, the “Bobbery” against Tampa Bay — was ready for whatever would come his way.

“Those two days were special, definitely,” Bobrovsky said. “Your mind is pulling, trying to tear you up between that you can lose everything and this is the greatest opportunity in your hands. That was kind of my thought process. I was so excited and I tried to tell myself how great that opportunity is to be in that spot, to be in Game 7 and to have the opportunity that the world is watching — really watching.”

The world saw him lift the Cup for the first time. Bobrovsky made 23 saves in Game 7.

“I stayed in the moment,” Bobrovsky said. “That was the key thing for me.”

Freedom was the word that Florida coach Paul Maurice kept saying to his team over the final days of the Stanley Cup Final. Play with freedom, he said. He wanted the team loose, to remember that the work had been done, to trust what had gotten the Panthers to the final and helped them take a 3-0 lead.

“I drove to the rink that morning, and freedom was the word in my mind,” Maurice said.

He tried to make the day as normal as possible. A morning coffee, meetings, going over the plan, trying to occupy his mind until nighttime. A couple shifts into the game, Maurice found himself realizing that it felt like a regular game.

And that was good. It felt like a game the Panthers had won plenty of times over the course of the season.

“Myself included, along with every player in that room, I felt like we were still learning going into Game 7,” Maurice said. "We were still trying to add things to who we are — and adding that freedom to our game was that was probably the missing piece. We played with that freedom.”

A week later, at the championship parade, Maurice ended his speech to the players and an estimated 300,000 revelers by bellowing one word. That word: “Freedom.”

Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk got a pep talk from his father Keith Tkachuk and his brother Brady Tkachuk — his dad was an NHL great, his brother is an NHL star now — on the morning of Game 7.

They were appreciated, but not really needed.

“I just remember waking up, going to the rink. Everything in my head was ‘this is it, this is it, this is it,’” Matthew Tkachuk said. “I just had such a good feeling. But above all else, I was thinking ‘This is the last game of the year.' I remembered watching the first game of the year; it was Tampa versus Nashville and I was in my living room. And that day, I was just thinking ‘I can’t believe I'm in this game right now. I watched the first game and I'm in the last game. Might as well leave it all out there. No tomorrow.'”

Well, technically, there was a tomorrow. June 25 was the day that Matthew Tkachuk might have bent one of the unwritten rules of Cup possession. He took it to a bar in Fort Lauderdale (that was OK) and then walked it across the street and went into the Atlantic Ocean (that was the frowned-upon part).

“We earned that,” Tkachuk said.

Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov is the franchise's record-holder in plenty of categories. He'd been with Florida for some really bad years and for plenty of playoff disappointment as well. In short, he'd seen everything — that is, except for the ultimate game to decide the Stanley Cup.

He tried not to think about what the moment — being the person who first hoists the Cup in the on-ice celebration, the perk that captains have when their team wins a title — would mean. He tried to just think about playing. It wasn't easy.

“Game 7, if you think about it now, it was nuts,” Barkov said. “We were up 3-0 in the series, then it was tied, and there were a lot of feelings. But if you’re playing and living in the moment, you just go out there and play, and that's what we did. We just felt that freedom and confidence in each other.”

Barkov — who became the first Finnish-born captain to hoist the Cup — was simultaneously nervous and confident. And when Game 7 finally started, it felt like hockey.

“There were a lot of things that made us feel the right way,” Barkov said. "We just went out there and we trusted each other. I knew that if we did the right things, we were going to end up winning. And, in the end, we did.”

AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL

FILE - Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito talks to defenseman Uvis Balinskis (26) after Game 7 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers, on June 24, 2024, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Florida Panthers head coach coach Paul Maurice, right, receives his Stanley Cup championship ring from Teresa Viola, wife of owner Vincent Viola, during a private ceremony commemorating the NHL team's Stanley Cup title last season, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

FILE - Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk raises the Stanley Cup trophy after defeating the Edmonton Oilers, Monday, June 24, 2024, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk celebrates after opening the box containing his Stanley Cup championship ring, during a private ceremony commemorating the NHL team's last season's Stanley Cup title, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

FILE - Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov (16) lifts the Stanley Cup trophy after Game 7 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Final, on June 24, 2024, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rocket fired from Yemen hit an area of Tel Aviv overnight, leaving 16 people slightly injured by shattered glass, the Israeli military said Saturday, days after Israeli airstrikes hit Houthi rebels who have been launching missiles in solidarity with Palestinians.

A further 14 people sustained minor injuries as they rushed to shelters when air raid sirens sounded before the projectile hit just before 4 a.m. Saturday, the military said.

The Houthi rebels issued a statement on the Telegram messaging app saying they had aimed a hypersonic ballistic missile at a military target, which they did not identify.

The attack comes less than two days after a series of Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and port city of Hodeida killed at least nine people. The Israeli strikes were in response to a Houthi attack in which a long-range missile hit an Israeli school building. The Houthis also claimed a drone strike targeting an unspecified military target in central Israel on Thursday.

The Israeli military says the Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and drones during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The Houthis have also been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and say they won’t stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Israeli strikes Thursday caused “considerable damage” to the Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports “that will lead to the immediate and significant reduction in port capacity,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The port at Hodeida has been key for food shipments into Yemen in its decade-long civil war.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said both sides’ attacks risk further escalation in the region and undermine U.N. mediation efforts.

In the Gaza Strip on Saturday, mourners held the funerals of 19 people — 12 of them children — killed in Israeli strikes on Friday and overnight.

One of the strikes hit a residential building in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least seven Palestinians, including five children and one woman, and injuring 16 others, health officials said.

In Gaza City, another strike on a house overnight killed 12 people, including seven children and two women, according to Al-Ahli Hospital where the bodies were taken.

Mourners gathered at the hospital in Gaza City Saturday morning. Women comforted each other as they wept over the bodies before they were carried away. One man, stony-faced, cradled a tiny shroud-wrapped body in his arms as he carried it along the funeral procession.

In Al-Aqsa Hospital of Deir al Balah, white body bags containing those killed in Nuseirat were taken from the morgue and loaded onto the back of an open truck to be taken for burial.

Overall, Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday that 21 people had been killed and 61 were wounded over the past 24 hours.

Israel faces heavy international criticism over the unprecedented levels of civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them.

Israel says it only strikes militants, and blames the Hamas militant group for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in residential areas.

More than 45,200 people have been killed and more than 107,500 wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, when a Hamas attack in Israel killed about 1,200 people and triggered the devastating 14-month war in Gaza. Local health officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but have said more than half of the fatalities are women and children.

The Israeli military organization dealing with humanitarian affairs for Gaza said Saturday it had led a “tactical coordinated operation” delivering thousands of food packages, flour and water to the Beit Hanoun area in the north of the Gaza Strip.

The organization, known by its acronym COGAT, said trucks from the U.N. World Food Program transported 2,000 food packages, 1,680 sacks of flour and thousands of liters of water to distribution centers in the area on Friday.

Aid groups have said previously that military operations and armed gangs have hindered their ability to distribute aid to civilians in need.

Gaza's Health Ministry issued an urgent appeal Saturday for medical and food supplies to be delivered to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, near Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, while the hospital director described dire conditions.

The ministry said in a statement that there was continuous gunfire and Israeli shelling near the hospital. “Shells have struck the third floor and the hospital’s entrances, creating a state of panic,” the ministry said.

Hospital Director Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh said the facility was “facing severe shortages."

“Despite promises, we have not received the necessary supplies to maintain electricity, water, and oxygen systems," Abu Safiyeh said. "Our requests for essential medical supplies and staff have largely gone unmet.”

He said the World Health Organization had delivered 70 units of blood, but that the hospital requires at least 200 units to meet urgent needs. He said 72 wounded people were being treated at the hospital.

The shortages extend beyond medical necessities. “Food is very scarce, and we cannot provide meals for the wounded. We are urgently calling on anyone who can provide supplies to help us,” he said. “The staff is working around the clock, yet we cannot even provide meals for them.”

Shurafa reported from Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Majdal Shams, Golan Heights, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Bodies of victims of an Israeli airstrike at the Nuseirat refugee camp are prepared for the funeral prayer outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Men pray over the bodies of victims of an Israeli airstrike at the Nuseirat refugee camp during a funeral prayer outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Bodies of victims of an Israeli airstrike at the Nuseirat arrive at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital before their funeral in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

An Israeli soldier observes the site where the missile launched from Yemen landed Jaffa district, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Tomer Appelbaum)