Why the Florida Panthers shoot plastic rats at Brad Marchand - ESPN

SUNRISE, Fla. — Every time the Florida Panthers win, Brad Marchand knows what's coming next: his teammates fire plastic rats at him with their sticks as they leave the ice in one of the NHL's oddest postgame celebrations.

«Yeah, they're shooting to hurt now,» Marchand said on Saturday, ahead of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Carolina Hurricanes. "Matthew Tkachuk caught me with one last game that I actually really felt there."

Panthers fans have thrown toy rats on the ice in celebration since the 1995-96 season, when forward Scott Mellanby exterminated a rodent with his stick — in a moment forever known as «The Rat Trick» — in the same season that Florida made a miraculous run to the Stanley Cup Final. Rats have become unofficial mascots for the franchise, to the point where their official team store not only sells rodent-adorned merchandise but also the plastic rats themselves.

Marchand has been called a «rat» with frequency during his 16-year NHL career, which is hockey parlance for being an agitator on the ice. So the celebration was a natural evolution when the Panthers acquired him at the NHL trade deadline from the Boston Bruins.

With the ice littered with plastic rodents at the end of Panthers wins, Marchand's teammates began shooting rats at «The Rat» on their way to the dressing room.

How did this tradition begin?

«They see my family on the ice and want us to be together,» Marchand deadpanned.

Actually, it was Panthers winger Evan Rodrigues that first shot a rat at Marchand in celebration.

«Yeah, I don't know how it started. But I think we won the first game he was here, so we ended up doing it. And it's just kind of became a thing,» Rodrigues said.

Later, Florida captain Aleksander Barkov