This article is part of our Rankings & Tiers series, an evaluation across sport about the key players, front offices, teams, franchises and much more.

By Chris Johnston, Michael Russo and Sean Gentille

If one Stanley Cup victory lap doesn’t do the trick, might as well take another.

The Florida Panthers’ second straight championship was enough, at least, to push them to the top of The Athletic’s NHL front-office rankings, as voted on by many of the league’s top decision-makers.

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For the second straight season, we asked high-ranking league executives — general managers, assistant GMs, senior advisers and scouting directors — who they felt were the league’s best-run clubs.

The execs, who spanned 27 organizations and included half of the league’s GMs, were asked to rank the league’s top five front offices.

First-place votes were worth 10 points, second-place seven, third-place five, fourth-place three and fifth-place one. Participants were granted anonymity for their votes and comments to allow them to speak freely, and they were not allowed to vote for their own teams.

The Panthers, indeed, ran and hid with the title. Four other teams received first-place votes, four more jumped into the top 10 and three crashed out, going from the top 10 to receiving zero votes.

Here are the final rankings for 2025, along with execs’ assessments of their peers.

1. Florida Panthers

Total points: 311 (25 first-place votes, appeared on 36 ballots)

Owner: Vincent Viola

GM and president of hockey operations: Bill Zito

Last year: 3

A year ago, despite winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in their history, the Panthers received just nine first-place votes out of 40. This time, our panel had seen enough. There was no longer any concern about recency bias — just respect for the beast Zito and Co. have constructed and sustained.

Some of that respect was a bit ... begrudging. "As unlikeable as they are," one Eastern Conference exec said, "you have to give them credit."

In any case, no franchise has been more effective in more areas than the defending champs.

"Bill and his team have done an