Gary Bettman allows Panthers to circumvent Stanley Cup rules.

The National Hockey League has made a special exception for the Florida Panthers, two in fact.

Last week, the new look Stanley Cup was unveiled with a host of new names attached to it as the members of the 2024-25 Florida Panthers were etched into history on the side of the most prestigious trophy in all of sports. On the Stanley Cup were all the names you would have expected to see, but included on there were also a pair of players that you may not have expected to see engraved into the Cup.

Those two names belong to Florida Panthers forward Jonah Gadjovich and Panthers defenseman Josh Mahura, neither of whom met the requirements in order to have their name included on the trophy.

In order to have your name engraved on the Cup you must play in at least 41 regular season games for the Championship team or have appeared in at least 1 Stanley Cup Final game. Both Gadjovich (39) and Mahura (30) were short of that regular season total and neither man appeared on the ice for the Panthers during the Stanley Cup playoffs, much less the Stanley Cup Final.

That being said teams are able to petition the league, more specifically directly to commissioner Gary Bettman himself, for a special exception and it would seem that Bettman has granted the Panthers a pair of those special exceptions.

I doubt very much that, if the Panthers themselves feel both these men deserved to be named on the Cup, that there will be much protest over Bettman's decision to grant them the exceptions.