In the run-up to this NHL season, the defending champion Florida Panthers raised season ticket renewal prices by 36.5%. It was a “testing the market” move by the franchise, according to chief revenue officer Shawn Thornton, who said fans responded with a renewal rate of more than 91%.

It’s one of a handful of ways the team has capitalized on its string of recent on-ice success. And it came at a pivotal time—it coincided with the Panthers moving from their RSN deal to an over-the-top broadcast agreement that likely included significantly less upfront cash.

With the Panthers now making their third straight Stanley Cup appearance—Game 1 vs. the Oilers is Wednesday in Edmonton—Thornton joined the Sporticast podcast to break down the various way this three-year run has boosted the team’s business. While that may seem obvious, successful playoffs don’t always turn on a significant revenue spigot. There’s extra gameday revenue from home postseason games, of course, but if season tickets are sold out and media deals are set, as is the case in Florida, it can be harder to secure a major windfall in other ways.

Speaking of the 36.5% season-ticket price increase, Thornton said it was “really high” compared to what’s typically seen from NHL teams, but added that there were prior years when the team didn’t increase prices as much as it should have. “Does [the 91% renewal rate] happen without this winning?” he said, “I’m not sure.”

“We started a big renewal plan in July, basically going into where we’re going to be, and how we’re going to get there, and explaining where we were, how the team’s success correlates, and how the revenue correlates to the salary cap and the amount of players we’re signing,” he said. “We walked everybody through it and our fan base was like, ‘You know what, this makes sense. We’re happy to pay for this product.’”

The team’s Amerant Bank Arena hosts about 19,250 for hockey, and this season about 13,500 of that was from season tickets, Thornton said, up from 13,000 the year before.

“We are working on a renovation of the arena,” he said. “So that might affect what the seat count looks like going forward. We’re working through that right now. And then percentage wise, we’re where we want to be.”

In addition to the changes to ticket pricing, Thornton detailed a number of other Panthers business metrics. Here are some snippets:

Season tickets: Panthers tickets have been sold out in each of the past three years, Thornton said, and there’s now a wait list.

Playoff tickets: Even though this is the team’s third straight Stanley Cup Final, Thornton said demand for playoff tickets from partners and friends is high.

Media: The Panthers announced last August that their local rights were moving from the then-bankrupt Diamond Sports family to an over-the-air deal with Scripps, a set-up that mirrored similar shifts for a handful of others in the NBA and NHL. While he declined to provide details about the rights fees—both Diamond and the Panthers called the separation mutual—Thornton said the switch to broadcast has exposed the team’s games to a lot more people. He said on a given night, some game viewership is up “2 to 3x and sometimes more” from comparable games in seasons past.

Rate Card: Success on the ice has helped fuel that increase in people watching Panthers games. And that means the team can command more from partners, Thornton said.

“Obviously there’s more eyeballs,” he said, “so every year we look at our rate card and we readjust it.”

Cold Calls: Thornton joked that in the past five years running the Panthers’ commercial operations, he’s only had a few inbound sales calls. He said that on outbound calls, some prospective partners would assume he was calling from the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.

“They’re like, ‘We don’t do business in Carolina,’” he said. “We’ve done a great job of being at the national level and the international level for the last five, six years. So it’s not as cold of a call anymore.”

Team Name: Asked if having Florida in the team’s name, as opposed to a single city, was an intentional aim to embrace the whole state, Thornton said the team has “flirted with a bunch of ideas.”

“We’ve talked about being the South Florida Panthers or the Fort Lauderdale Panthers and there’s different opinions on it,” he said. “The state of Florida has been great with hockey the last 10 or 12 years between us and Tampa. It’s been amazing to watch the growth of the game and the success of the team. So I think we’re happy with the brand recognition now.”