SUNRISE, Fla. — Brian Campbell was grumpy.
It was the start of the 2014-15 season and the Florida Panthers were opening at the cross-state Tampa Bay Lightning. Campbell, a defenseman beginning his 15th season in the NHL, was told he would be paired with the newly drafted rookie the Panthers had taken at No. 1 in the 2014 NHL Draft, 18-year-old Aaron Ekblad, a player he had barely played with in the preseason.
“I was worried. I was like, ‘Oh jeez, we’re going to play Tampa right now, pretty good hockey team. I’m playing with an 18-year-old,’” Campbell said. “But, I think, ‘Shame on me.’”
Campbell struggled the first two games the pair played together, sinking into his discomfort and disappointment, giving into the negativity he felt. But after those two games, in which Ekblad outplayed him, he forced himself to stop being “pouty” — his word — and realize he had been handed a better situation than he anticipated.
He and Ekblad just worked.
“Sometimes you’re an older guy, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to play with a young guy, we’re going to struggle,’” recalled Campbell, an adviser, hockey operations in the front office of the Chicago Blackhawks who spoke from the 2024 NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo this week. “It was just the complete opposite.”
The mixed feelings vanished. The pair excelled. Ekblad would go on to play 81 games that season with 39 points (12 goals, 27 assists) playing 21:49 per game, ultimately winning the Calder Trophy, voted as NHL rookie of the year.
He has been a steady force for the Panthers ever since.
Ekblad and the smothering Florida defense is part of why the Panthers are here, in the Stanley Cup Final, for the second straight season. They will continue their quest to win the Cup for the first time in their history in Game 1 against the Edmonton Oilers at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS, CBC).
It has been a journey to get here, starting from making the NHL at 18 years old.
But Ekblad, really, never exactly played like an 18-year-old.
“Just having the maturity of a 30-year-old guy, even being so young, was probably the biggest thing that I took from him,” said former NHL defenseman Keith Yandle, who overlapped with Ekblad for five seasons with Florida, lived three doors down and drove to the rink with him nearly every day. “He looked older than he was, he acts older than he is, and he plays older than he is.
“I think now you see what he’s bringing to that team. He’s not just a one-trick pony where he’s just good on the power play or just good at shutting guys down. He does a little bit of everything and he does it all really well.”
That maturity was evident from the start. Three years before he made the NHL, Ekblad, already 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, became the second-ever player and first defenseman to be granted “exceptional player” status, allowing him to play in the Canadian Hockey League a year early, at 15, for Barrie of the Ontario Hockey League.
Which was why it didn’t seem such a stretch for him to enter the NHL immediately.
“I don’t know if it’s the beard, or the way he carries himself on the ice, but at no point did you think he was 18 years old,” Yandle said. “He’s wise above his age and also plays above his age as well.”
Yandle traced that all the way back to gaining that experience far before most, experience that would set him up well for his future.
“Playing in the OHL at 15, 16 years old is — having played in the Quebec (Major Junior Hockey) League at, I think, 18 — I couldn’t imagine playing at 15,” Yandle said. “I think he’s just mature above his age just because of probably what he’s been through, being a superstar player from a young age, having expectations. I think he’s handled it well.”
And more than that, Ekblad has had sustained success in the NHL, has year after year pushed himself and his team forward, has been a steady, if not spectacular, force on the Panthers’ blue line, watching as the team has improved around him to get to this point.
Now 28 and Florida’s second-longest tenured player in his 10th season in the League, Ekblad has fashioned a reputation for himself, one Campbell said is perhaps the highest achievement for a defenseman.
“I always say the biggest compliment as a defense partner is they’re easy to play with and he was easy to play with,” Campbell said. “He wasn’t a guy trying to do too much. So I just felt like he was really easy to play with. And we’re talking 18. I’ve played with other guys that are easy to play with, but they’re 30 years old or 28 years old. He was really easy to play with.”
For Yandle, meanwhile, the idea of playing with Ekblad was a positive by the time, two years later, he considered a move to Florida. Yandle had finished his ninth season in the NHL when the New York Rangers traded his rights to the Panthers for two draft picks on June 20, 2016. It was a gamble that paid off when Yandle signed a seven-year contract with Florida three days later.
“To be honest, he was probably the main reason why I signed down in Florida,” Yandle said. “It was kind of pitched to me that I would be playing with him, a young, stud D-man to come in and play with. We might have played three or four games together.”
Yandle laughed.
But even though it didn’t quite work out for them as a pair, even the prospect had been enticing because of what Ekblad had already demonstrated he could do in the NHL.
“I think the biggest thing, and it’s an underrated skill in the NHL and I think it’s gotten less and less, is the communication,” Yandle said. “When I first started in the League, it was pretty much all guys that were 28 to 40 years old, the League was just older, but guys were so good at communicating the game and making things easy for you.
“I think Aaron had that, even at a young age. A lot of young guys are afraid to tell a guy something or afraid to speak up, don’t want to put their foot in their mouth, especially on the ice.”
It’s something the average fan never really notices. But it’s something Ekblad has always had.
It’s something that has been long part of his success. Part of what got him here, even as he has evolved from the player that jumped into the NHL at 18.
“Extremely different,” Ekblad said. “It’s a completely different game. I think the NHL’s evolved in a way where I’ve had to evolve. My game isn’t so offensive anymore, based on offense, it’s more predicated on my gaps and my abilities, breaking pucks out cleanly. Those are the ways that I impact the game more than I do offensively, which is different than when I started.”
This season has not been entirely easy for Ekblad. He broke his foot in the Eastern Conference First Round against the Boston Bruins in 2023 and sustained two shoulder dislocations and tore an oblique muscle as the Panthers ran to the Final. He didn’t make his debut this season until Nov. 17 and finished with 18 points (four goals, 14 assists) in 51 games, the fewest points he has scored in a season in the NHL.
Not that he’s ever been overly focused on his point totals.
Over his career, Ekblad has never scored more than 57, which he did in 2021-22 when Florida finished 58-18-6 and won the Presidents’ Trophy for having the best record in the NHL that season. But he doesn’t need to be that kind of an offensive threat, even if it’s what might be expected from a former No. 1 pick.
“Being the first overall pick, I think people expect you to get 60, 70 points a year,” Yandle said. “For a defenseman, that’s just hard. I’d rather have a guy like Aaron who can play any time in the game, any situation, power play, penalty kill, last minute of the game, first minute of the game. He’s a guy you want out there.
“For him, it’s just realizing — and I think he’s done that really well the last few years — is points don’t matter as much as people think they do. It’s all about winning. I think what they’ve done in the last couple years, just playing sound hockey, being a hard team to play against, that just proves how good of a player he is.”
