Maurice Gets Front Row Seat to Panthers Firing Rats at Marchand

After his first game with the Florida Panthers, Brad Marchand made sure to grab a couple of the rubber rats that hit the ice following an overtime win against Utah.

His kids had asked why Florida fans threw those squeaky toys onto the ice, and, he did not have a good answer for them.

“It was one of the things my kids said right away, they asked about the rats” Marchand said after making his debut with the Panthers on March 28.

“I was like ‘I didn’t know when it happens, but if it does, I will grab a couple.’ So, I did.”

Now, he knows the story behind it.

And his teammates remind him of it after every win.

Ever since that first game with the Panthers, Sasha Barkov and Evan Rodrigues have been scooping up rats with their sticks and firing them at Marchand before they leave the ice.

They do it after home wins when the ice looks like the Dollar Tree around Halloween time, and they also do it on the road if some brave Florida fans get those rats over the glass and onto the ice.

“It just became a thing,’’ Rodrigues said.

Thursday night in Raleigh, there were a few rats on the ice.

But, unlike other arenas in the NHL, the visiting bench is not connected to the visiting locker room.

So, all players — and coaches, and equipment managers, trainers, etc. — have to exit the ice through one of the side doors.

That included coach Paul Maurice, who got caught up in Barkov and Rodrigues’ ritual of firing rats at Marchand.

Maurice seemed taken aback at first.

“I had heard about it, but never seen it,” Maurice said on Friday before the Panthers flew home holding a 2-0 series lead on the Hurricanes.

“I will tell you, they’re shooting them as hard as they can. They’re not flipping them at him. There’s shrapnel around there, and I didn’t have any equipment on. I was just trying to get off the ice. Like, it hurt. They’re heating them up at him, and he’s trying to get out of the way.

“It is funny as hell.”

Paul Maurice gets stuck on the ice in the Brad Marchand rat jam by the only exit… https://t.co/oxP8FRONiv

— George Richards (@GeorgeRichards) May 23, 2025

The rubber rat tradition in South Florida has been going on since Scott Mellanby one-timed a real, live rodent while sitting in a makeshift locker room at Miami Arena before the 1995-96 opener against the Calgary Flames.

Once the story got out about the rats, a couple of fans tossed toy rats onto the ice following goals. Soon, the ice would be littered with rubber rats — and whatever else fans could find — in the team’s run to the 1996 Stanley Cup Final.

The NHL put in a rule the following season that would penalize the home team for delay of game, thereby outlawing the practice.

Only it came up again during the 2012 playoffs and  in a game in 2016 when the Panthers celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the 1996 team by giving out soft rubber rats to fans coming into the building.

Many of them ended up, you guessed it, on the ice.

Fans now, for the most part, have limited throwing rats onto the ice only following wins although, sometimes in blowouts, fans do not care about the penalty and let them fly early.

2025 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: GAME 3

CAROLINA HURRICANES @ FLORIDA PANTHERS

Panthers lead Best-of-7 Series 2-0

• When: Saturday, 8 p.m. 
• Where: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise
• National TV: TNT/truTV
• National Streaming: Max
• Radio: WQAM 560-AM; WPOW 96.5-FM2; WBZT 1230-AM (Palm Beach); WCTH 100.3-FM (Florida Keys); SiriusXM
• Panthers Radio Streaming: SiriusXM 932, NHL App
• Series Schedule (all games on TNT/tru, 8 p.m.) — Game 1: Florida 5, Carolina 2; Game 2: Florida 5, Carolina 0; Game 3: Saturday @Florida; Game 4: Monday @Florida; Game 5*: Wednesday @Carolina; Game 6*: Friday, May 30 @Florida; Game 7*: Sunday, June 1 @Carolina
• Regular Season: Panthers Won 2-1
• How They Got Here: Carolina d. New Jersey (5), Washington (5); Florida d. Tampa Bay (5), Toronto (7).
• All-Time Regular Season Series: Carolina/Hartford leads 74-49-10, 11 ties
• Postseason History: Florida 1-0 (2023 ECF in 4)