Flames' Lomberg receives Stanley Cup ring and praise from Panthers
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Months after he moved on from the Florida Panthers, Ryan Lomberg’s former teammates still smile when talking about the energy and enthusiasm he brought to the rink every day for the 2024 Stanley Cup champions.
Lomberg received his Stanley Cup ring at a Calgary restaurant on Friday night, surrounded by those he’ll forever be intertwined with.
“Overwhelming for sure,” he said, of receiving the bling.
“You want to reminisce and chat about the good old times.”
Lomberg didn’t play in Florida’s top-six and wasn’t the first to hop over the boards to kill a penalty, but he had an outsized impact on the Panthers. On Saturday, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice and others in the organization spoke about how important his demeanor and enthusiasm were during the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship.
“They’re really good at offsetting coaches because you're an ass most days, and then you get a guy that knows how to do it right,” Maurice said with a grin.
“There's certain days that even if you're an energy guy, you got to be a little careful with how smiley you are. But you need those guys to make it fun in your room.”
Lomberg, according to Maurice, could deliver a message that the team's stars couldn’t deliver given his route to the NHL and that he would sometimes sit as a healthy scratch. Lomberg could empathize with other players in similar situations.
“They can approach a young player or another guy, let's say in the bottom-six, differently,” Maurice said. “When [captain Sasha] Barkov puts [his] arm around you and says, ‘It's going to be okay,’ it's going to be okay, but you're never going to be Barkov, right? He's going to be okay.
“The Lombergs of the world are connected to everybody in the room, and they can have those conversations.”
“His energy that he brings is is like no other team I've ever played, with his positivity on the bench and in the locker room,” said Panthers forward Sam Bennett. “It’s actually really, really needed on teams.”
Calgary Flames players feel similar.
Since training camp, head coach Ryan Huska and others have raved about Lomberg. During intermissions, he’s quick to encourage the group and be vocal. At practice, he’s chirping and smiling. He fights and stands up for teammates. Lomberg has said he doesn’t take any day in the league for granted, and that has rubbed off on others in the Flames locker room during a season with expected growing pains as the club rebuilds itself.
Huska said that Lomberg’s Stanley Cup ring would be motivating for the team as they try and snap out of a stretch where they’ve won just twice in their last nine games. Calgary’s last game was an 8-3 loss to Tampa Bay on Thursday, their worst defeat on home ice in nearly five years.
“It's really nice,” Huska said. “It brought a lot of smiles around our room…it's something that eventually everybody wants to have a chance to get.”
Flames projected lineup
Huberdeau-Kadri-Pospisil
Coleman-Backlund-Coronato
Sharangovich-Zary-Pelletier
Lomberg-Rooney-Duehr
Bahl-Andersson
Hanley-Weegar
Bean-Pachal
Wolf
Cooley