Back-to-back! Panthers defeat Oilers again, repeat as Stanley Cup champions.

SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup champions — again.

Sam Reinhart had four goals and scored the first hat trick in Panthers playoffs history, Matthew Tkachuk added a goal, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 27 of 28 shots he faced and the Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-1, in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday at Amerant Bank Arena for their second consecutive championship.

Florida beat Edmonton in seven games in the Cup Final last year for the first title in franchise history.

After winning it all last year, the Panthers made it their mission to run it back. Winning it once, getting a taste of the success, wasn’t enough.

“It makes you greedier,” Tkachuk said ahead of the series. “I said it at the beginning of the year, it was such an incredible life-changing moment, and we just want to do it again.”

They did it again.

The Panthers are the seventh team in the expansion era (since the 1967-68 season) to win consecutive Stanley Cups. They join the Tampa Bay Lightning (2020-21), Pittsburgh Penguins (1991-92 and 2016-17), Detroit Red Wings (1997-98), Oilers (1984-85 and 1987-88), New York Islanders (four straight from 1980-83), Montreal Canadiens (1968-69 and four straight from 1976-79) and Philadelphia Flyers (1974-75).

And they did it on Tuesday by doing exactly what they did most of the postseason: Dominating early, wearing down the opponent late and getting superb goaltending when it mattered the most.

Reinhart, who scored the game-winner in Game 7 of the Cup Final last year, opened scoring 4:36 in with a beaut of an individual effort. He stole the puck from Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard in the neutral zone, charged forward, beat Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm and let off a wrist shot as he was falling in the slot that beat Stuart Skinner. It was Reinhart’s eighth goal of the postseason and fourth consecutive game of the series with a goal.

Tkachuk, battling all postseason with an apparent groin injury he sustained during the 4 Nations Face-Off in mid-February that sidelined him for the final 25 games of the regular season, then gave Florida a 2-0 lead with 46.4 seconds left in the frame with a wrist shot from the high slot.

The Panthers scored multiple goals in the first period of every game in the series and outscored the Oilers 13-4 in the opening frame, including holding Edmonton scoreless in the first period over the final four games. Florida scored 30 first-period goals this postseason.

Reinhart then pushed Florida’s lead to 3-0 with 2:29 left in the second period when he tipped in an Aleksander Barkov shot after an excellent shift in the offensive zone from Florida’s top line overall.

And then the Panthers sealed it — and Reinhart sealed his hat trick — with a pair of empty-net goals. Reinhart’s hat trick is the 36th in a Stanley Cup Final in NHL history but only the second this century. Mark Stone recorded a hat trick in the Vegas Golden Knights’ Cup-clinching Game 5 win over the Panthers in 2023.

He is just the fourth player in NHL history with at least four goals in a Cup Final game, joining Maurice Richard in 1957, Ted Lindsay in 1955 and Newsy Lalonde in 1919.

Through it all, Bobrovsky was fantastic in net, as he has been all postseason. The 36-year-old goaltender, who just wrapped up his 15th NHL season, held Edmonton off the board for 55:18 before Vasily Podkolzin broke up the shutout with a garbage-time goal. Bobrovsky held opponents to two goals or fewer in 14 of 23 games.

And so the Panthers put a ribbon on another masterclass postseason after being battle-tested through the regular season.

While essentially all of the team’s core from last year’s title run returned, Florida had to replaced nine key contributors from that championship team in forwards Vladimir Tarasenko, Kevin Stenlund, Nick Cousins, Ryan Lomberg, Kyle Okposo and Steven Lorentz; defensemen Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson; and backup goaltender Anthony Stolarz.

The Panthers did so first in the offseason by signing forwards A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek and Jesper Boqvist plus defenseman Nate Schmidt.

And then they beefed up at the trade deadline, with president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito swinging two massive deals to bring in forward Brad Marchand and defenseman Seth Jones as well as forward Nico Sturm and goaltender Vitek Vanecek.

At full strength, the moves gave the Panthers 15 forwards and eight defensemen they felt confident in rolling out on any given night.

But the team wasn’t at full strength down the stretch. Far from it.

Tkachuk missed the final 25 games with the injury from 4 Nations.

Top-pair defenseman Aaron Ekblad had to sit out the final 18 regular-season games and first two playoff games due to suspension.

Marchand didn’t suit up for Florida until March 28 — three weeks after being acquired — because of an injury he sustained prior to the trade.

Key defensemen Niko Mikkola and Dmitry Kulikov missed time late in the season, too.

So after Florida clinched its playoff spot, coach Paul Maurice took the onus upon himself to rest players as the regular season came to an end.

It cost them a spot atop the standings, dropping them from first place in the Atlantic to third and forcing them into a position where they would start every playoff series on the road.

But when the postseason arrived, the Panthers were ready.

A first-round rematch with the Tampa Bay Lightning? Dispatched in five games.

A second-round tilt with the Toronto Maple Leafs, after digging themselves a 2-0 hole? A seven-game series victory.

An Eastern Conference final set with the Carolina Hurricanes? Advanced after five games.

And then the Stanley Cup Final rematch with the Oilers one year after the first series between the teams went seven games? Florida prevailed again.

The Panthers’ stars showed up when it mattered, but Florida won because of its depth. Nineteen players scored at least one goal. Six had at least 20 points. They had three players — Reinhart, Bennett and Marchand — score at least five goals in the Cup Final, something only one other team (the 1955 Red Wings) has done before.

And with that, back-to-back championships secured.