Winning the Stanley Cup once is a miracle. Doing it twice? That’s just showing off. Honestly, if you look at the Stanley Cup winners in the last 10 years, you’ll see a league that’s supposedly built for parity but keeps getting dominated by the same three or four locker rooms.
It’s kind of wild. The NHL has a hard salary cap specifically designed to stop dynasties, yet we’ve seen three separate back-to-back champions since 2016. It makes you wonder if "parity" is just something Gary Bettman says to keep small-market fans hopeful.
The Florida Repeat and the Modern Era
Just this past June, the Florida Panthers did the unthinkable. They didn't just win; they repeated. After beating the Edmonton Oilers in a seven-game heart-stopper in 2024, they came back in 2025 and took them down again, this time in six.
Watching Aleksander Barkov lift that trophy two years in a row felt like a shift in the hockey universe. Florida used to be the team where veterans went to retire and play golf. Now? They’re the meanest, deepest roster in the league. Paul Maurice finally got his due, and honestly, seeing a guy like Sam Bennett thrive after being cast off by Calgary shows you how much "fit" matters over raw stats.
But Florida isn't the only team to pull this off lately.
The Tampa Bay Lightning did it in 2020 and 2021. Those "bubble" years were weird, sure, but you can’t argue with a roster that had Kucherov, Point, and Vasilevskiy all peaking at the exact same time. Then you go back to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin basically willed those teams to consecutive titles, proving that while depth wins games, superstars win Cups.
📖 Related: Barry Sanders Shoes Nike: What Most People Get Wrong
The Full List: Who Actually Won?
If you're trying to keep track of the names engraved on the silver lately, here is the breakdown of the last decade. It’s a mix of heavyweights and one very specific "Cinderella" story from the Midwest.
- 2025: Florida Panthers (Defeated Edmonton Oilers 4-2)
- 2024: Florida Panthers (Defeated Edmonton Oilers 4-3)
- 2023: Vegas Golden Knights (The "Misfits" finally did it in year six)
- 2022: Colorado Avalanche (Cale Makar was basically a cheat code this year)
- 2021: Tampa Bay Lightning (The second half of the back-to-back)
- 2020: Tampa Bay Lightning (The bubble Cup in Edmonton)
- 2019: St. Louis Blues (The "Gloria" year—last to first in four months)
- 2018: Washington Capitals (Ovechkin finally got his moment and didn't stop partying for a month)
- 2017: Pittsburgh Penguins (The first repeat of the cap era)
- 2016: Pittsburgh Penguins (The start of the Sullivan era)
Why the Blues in 2019 Still Matters
Most people talk about the repeats, but the 2019 St. Louis Blues run is probably the most "human" thing we've seen in hockey. On January 3, 2019, they were the worst team in the NHL. Literally dead last.
Then Jordan Binnington showed up.
They started playing "Gloria" in the locker room. They played a heavy, bruising style of hockey that most experts said was "dead" in the new, fast NHL. They proved that if you have a hot goalie and a team that’s willing to finish every single check, you can beat anyone. Even a Boston Bruins team that looked invincible on paper.
That win remains the only time in the last 10 years a team won their first-ever franchise Cup after being in the league for decades. It gave hope to every long-suffering fan base out there. Sorta.
👉 See also: Arizona Cardinals Depth Chart: Why the Roster Flip is More Than Just Kyler Murray
The Vegas Expansion Anomaly
Then there's Vegas. The Vegas Golden Knights won in 2023, just six years after they started existing.
A lot of fans in traditional markets (looking at you, Toronto) were pretty salty about it. The expansion draft rules were definitely tilted in their favor, but you have to give credit to their front office. They were ruthless. They traded away "original" misfits the second a better option like Jack Eichel became available.
It wasn't "classy," but it worked.
What Most People Get Wrong About Winning
There’s this myth that you need to be the best regular-season team to win the Cup.
Total nonsense.
Look at the Presidents' Trophy winners—the teams with the most points in the regular season. In the last 10 years, almost none of them have actually won the Stanley Cup. The 2023 Bruins set the record for most wins in a season and got bounced in the first round by Florida.
✨ Don't miss: Anthony Davis USC Running Back: Why the Notre Dame Killer Still Matters
Winning the Cup is about survival.
It’s about whose third-line center can play through a broken rib and whose goalie doesn't have a mental breakdown after allowing a soft goal in overtime. Statistics from the NHL Media group show that teams that make a coaching change mid-season (like the 2016 Penguins or 2019 Blues) actually have a bizarrely high success rate. It's like the "new car smell" of a coaching change gives them just enough of a spark to survive four rounds of playoff hell.
The "Canada Problem"
We can't talk about Stanley Cup winners in the last 10 years without mentioning the drought. Canada hasn't seen a Cup since 1993.
Edmonton came so close in 2024 and 2025. Connor McDavid is arguably the greatest player to ever lace them up, and even he couldn't get the Oilers over the hump against the Florida machine. It’s become a psychological weight for the entire country. Every year, the pressure on teams like Toronto and Edmonton grows, and every year, a team from a place where it doesn't even snow (Tampa, Vegas, Florida) seems to take it home.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Bettors
If you’re looking at the trends from the last decade to predict who’s next, keep these three things in mind:
- Ignore the Regular Season: Don't bet the house on the team that finishes with 120 points. They're usually exhausted by May. Look for the team that struggled in November but went 8-2 in April.
- Health is a Skill: The teams that won (especially the Lightning and Panthers) had incredible depth. You need 18 skaters who can all play 15 minutes a night because someone will get hurt.
- The "Second Year" Rule: Since 2016, if a team loses in the Final, they have a weirdly good chance of winning it all the next year. Pittsburgh did it (after their 2008 loss, though that's outside the 10-year window), and Florida just did it. Heartbreak is a great motivator.
The next few years look like they'll be dominated by the "powerhouse" era again. With the cap finally starting to rise significantly in 2025 and 2026, the rich teams are going to get richer. But as the Blues showed us, sometimes all you need is a catchy song and a goalie nobody has ever heard of.