[1] As the team prepared for its home opener against the Calgary Flames on October 8, 1995, a rat entered the dressing room, startling several players.
Then, they defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins in seven games to win the Prince of Wales Trophy as the rat-tossing craze reached its peak as 3,000 rats rained onto the ice following goals.
[3] While officially frowning on the practice of throwing rats, the team nonetheless brought on Orkin as a sponsor and employed a crew of 40 rink attendants dressed up as exterminators to clear the ice after each Florida goal.
[1] The "year of the rat" in south Florida reached a fever pitch as the Panthers made their first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Area supermarkets sold "rat cakes" (cupcakes with rats drawn in icing), while baseball's Florida Marlins showed the Panthers' game seven victory against the Penguins, in Pittsburgh, on the Jumbotron between innings on June 1 and had the Panthers' arena announcer on hand to announce when the team scored a goal.
In the first period of Game 3, Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy famously refused to duck under his net, as other goalies had, to hide from the barrage of rats after Rob Niedermayer's goal at 11:19 put the Panthers up 2–1.
[7] Directly as a result of the rat trick craze, the NHL amended its rules prior to the 1996–97 season to prevent a recurrence of this phenomenon and delays to the game that followed.
As part of the event, the Panthers sold plastic rats for fans to toss onto the ice during the exhibition game, which saw the participation of at least nineteen members of the 1996 team.
Twenty years since the fateful playoff run, several members of the 1995–96 team returned to South Florida to be honored on March 12, 2016, including John Vanbiesbrouck, Brian Skrudland and Scott Mellanby.