Steve Milton: 7 Hamilton area connections to the Stanley Cup final

With the Sun Belt Stanley Cup final between the Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights opening in Sin City Saturday, The Spectator offers this list of seven connections between the finalists and the Hamilton area.

1. Carter Verhaeghe

The Panthers winger grew up in Waterdown - he took the Stanley Cup, from his 2020 win with Tampa to Memorial Park to inspire minor hockey players there - and was drafted into the OHL from the Hamilton Junior Bulldogs in 2012. So, it's taken Verhaeghe a decade to become an overnight success. Everyone who covers the Panthers calls Verhaeghe the best free agency signing general manager Bill Zito has made. After the Leafs traded him, the Islanders didn't keep him, and the cap-stricken Lightning couldn't retain him three years ago, Verhaeghe signed with the Panthers. Zito told The Athletic recently that Verhaeghe came with excellent analytics, our pro scouts (including Pete Mahovlich) liked him, he had a scoring history in the AHL, and was part of a championship culture in Tampa Bay." But he has really lit it up since, rising from a depth contributor to flanking the team's top centres. Verhaeghe had 24 goals and 55 points last year, and became Florida's first 40-goal scorer in 23 years this year with 42. He had a stunning six goals in last year's first playoff round against Washington and this year scored the winning goal in overtime to complete the Panthers' improbable three-game comeback over the Bruins. He's got six goals in the post-season and although he hasn't scored in three games, he's been a threat every shift. Uncanny nose for the net," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper told The Athletic. The pucks have eyes for him. Fearless shooter."

2. Brandon Montour

Matthew Tkachuk and Sergei Bobrovsky get most of the Florida accolades, deservedly, but the best defenceman of the post-season has been Ohsweken's Brandon Montour, who played junior-B for the Caledonia Corvairs and junior-A and B lacrosse for Six Nations. He has six goals and three assists in Florida's 16 post-season games, joins the rush as the third or fourth man and still gets back to defend the counterattack. He had never scored a goal in his 37 playoff games prior to this year but, after the best regular season of his nine-year career (16 goals, 73 points), he's continued that deep into the spring. He scored the first goal and the game-tying goal with a minute left to put Game 7 against Boston into overtime, and in Florida's quadruple-overtime victory over Carolina - the sixth-longest game in Stanley Cup playoff history - he led all players with 58 minutes of playing time and skated a measured 8.96 miles. In college, he played 70 minutes in the longest game in NCAA history. Knew he was a dynamic player," his defence partner Marc Staal told the Rocky Mountain Outlook. But being on the ice every day and playing with him, he does some pretty incredible things. We rely on him a lot for our offence. He's a big part of that. That pressure and responsibility was put on him. He just took it and ran with it." Tkachuk says that when the stage gets bigger, Montour ramps up his game: He plays intense, he plays physically." Former Florida scout Mahovlich told The Spec this week that Montour has rare physicality for a smaller, faster defenceman and uses it to his advantage.

3. George McPhee

McPhee, the president of hockey operations for Vegas, is the architect of the Golden Knights' phenomenal success, crafting a team which reached the 2018 Stanley Cup final in its first season in the league. He turned over his GM duties to Kelly McCrimmon four years ago but is still a force as team president. McPhee got his managerial start under Hamilton's Pat Quinn, who hired him as an assistant GM in Vancouver and put him in charge of the Hamilton Canucks, then the team's AHL affiliate, from 1992 to '94. McPhee ran the team for the NHL when the league took it over from owners Double Hitch Enterprises early in the 1993-94 season, and has often said the experience Quinn gave him in both Hamilton and Vancouver catapulted him into his first GM job with Washington in 1997.

4. Sylvain Lefebvre

The Panthers assistant coach, who played for the Leafs, Canadiens and Rangers in an NHL playing career that reached nearly 1,000 games, was the last coach of the AHL Hamilton Bulldogs before they left the city for Newfoundland in 2015. It was his first head coaching assignment and he did not make the playoffs in any of the three years he was at the helm.

5. Bill Lindsay

Lindsay, the Florida TV commentator who played 777 NHL games, was at the tail-end of his career in the 2002-03 season when Montreal sent him down to their AHL Bulldogs franchise and he caught fire in the playoffs. He scored 10 goals in the post-season as the Dogs advanced to the seventh game of the Calder Cup final, which they lost to Houston before the biggest playoff crowd in AHL history at what was then Copps Coliseum. That bought Lindsay a final NHL contract in Nashville the next season. Canadiens team doctor David Mulder saved Lindsay's life that year by not letting him board the plane back to Nashville when he'd been struck in the throat by a shot. A few hours later Lindsay had an emergency tracheotomy.

6. Rick Dudley

The former lacrosse player, NHL player and team exec, and a GM in Ottawa, Tampa Bay, Florida and Atlanta, became Montreal's assistant GM in 2012 and moved up to senior vice-president of hockey operations in 2014. The Bulldogs, a Habs' farm team, were in his portfolio and he spent a lot of time in Hamilton monitoring the team. He's now a senior adviser for the Panthers.

7. Zac Dalpe

The 33-year-old Panthers centre from Paris spent the bulk of the season with AHL Charlotte, but played 17 games with the Panthers. Dalpe played minor hockey in Paris and Brantford, and adds depth and grit to Florida's bottom six when he gets to play. He was a healthy scratch, though, for the entire sweep of Carolina in the Eastern Conference finals, but did play all five games against Toronto and four against Boston. He has only one post-season point in his NHL career but it was one of the biggest in franchise history, with his goal tying Game 6 in the opening round comeback upset against Boston, in a game the Panthers needed to win to avoid elimination.

Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com