It's not about throwing a punch. We know both these teams can land a haymaker. No team gets this far without that skill, even if each comes at it from a slightly different angle—the Oilers, more straightforward, windmilling their arms as they close the gap on you, daring you to stop it even when you know it's coming; the Panthers, maybe taking you off-guard with a knee to the groin or some pocket sand in the eyes before striking.
Instead, the Stanley Cup Final is about taking a punch. Can you suffer blows to the body and psyche, and keep playing your brand of hockey? Can you take the fight to an opponent who smells your blood, and likes the smell? These Oilers and Panthers would seem uniquely suited to counterpunching. Edmonton, who set an NHL playoff record last month with six straight comeback wins. Florida, who went down two games to Toronto, then flipped a switch and haven't looked back since. But could the Oilers take the Panthers' best thump?
They looked a little overwhelmed last year—by the spotlight, by the pressure, by Florida's relentlessness—and by the time they found their feet, it would have required a historic comeback that they just didn't quite have in them. But, in this new year, this fresh series, with a delirious home crowd ... Edmonton got knocked on its ass again. Scored early, then spent the next 20 minutes getting boatraced. Went down 3-1, to a team that doesn't cough up leads. Last year, that might've been game. This year, the Oilers picked themselves up from the ice, dusted themselves off, and controlled most of the rest of the way, landing a knockdown blow of their own, when Leon Draisaitl scored at 19:29 of overtime to win Game 1.
Think Edmonton wants this badly? The crowd was lunatic from puck drop. No wonder, this being the first time in 14 years a Final has opened in a Canadian city, and it happens to be a Canadian city that came within a game a year ago, and has been dreaming of a team like this ever since Connor McDavid arrived. Thought it couldn't get louder? You were only allowed to think that for 66 seconds.
It took 10 minutes for the Panthers to remind the home side that this was a fistfight, not a party. A messy netfront fleshpile allowed a Carter Verhaeghe shot to get through off of Sam Bennett, who made contact with just about everyone in the vicinity wearing blue and orange. Kris Knoblauch opted to challenge for goaltender interference, but officials decided the goal was good and the Oilers' failed challenge was punished with a man in the box. Brad Marchand roofed a puck on the ensuing power play.
Two minutes into the second period, Sam Bennett, who's going to earn an ungodly amount of money this summer, showed exactly why with his second of the game and 12th of the playoffs to put Florida up 3-1. Remember how raucous the crowd sounded at 1-0? If anything, the silence here spoke even louder.
When the Panthers punch back, they punch back hard, and their opponent doesn't usually get back up. They were, over this three-year stretch of Cup Final runs, 31-0 when leading after the first period, let alone the second. Were.
Viktor Arvidsson scored a goal just 1:17 later, a goal that looms huge in retrospect. Bringing the lead back within one allowed the Oilers to stay calm, and focus on tilting the ice. The Panthers are defensively ferocious enough that they can usually rein in their forecheck to protect a lead, but the actual "most dangerous lead in hockey" requires just one lapse. That came when Mattias Ekholm, freshly returned from injury but maybe not 100 percent, blasted a wrister through traffic to tie the game at 6:06 of the third.
It's barely an exaggeration to say this contest was all Oilers after Florida took then quickly surrendered its two-goal lead. Shots were 14-2 Edmonton in the third, and 24-8 including overtime. The Panthers' 46 total shots allowed were the most they've given up in a postseason game since the 2023 conference final. This was uncharacteristically conservative. "Just not let up. Don't sit back," Bennett said. "We've been really good all year at not sitting back with the lead, and for whatever reason we sat back tonight."
Meanwhile, Edmonton was flying. They spent what felt like most of the overtime period pinning the Panthers in their zone, and their legs looked infinitely fresher than the Cats'. It was that pressure that led Tomas Nosek to put the puck over the glass late in OT1, and it was time to slay another dragon: Florida's NHL-best penalty kill in the playoffs (87.9 percent to that point). The Oilers moved the puck like it was a drill, thinning out the Panthers' desperate PK until it frayed at the seams enough for Draisaitl to slip through.
If the Oilers' game wasn't exactly always dominant, it was surely declarative. It was enough to make you think that any cases of nerves in Edmonton were completely gone, left behind in last year's locker clean-out. Goalie Stuart Skinner spoke for the team when he said that last year, the enormity of the thing was tangible, but things are different now. "When I saw the Cup on the ice last year, I was kind of looking at it with googly eyes," Skinner said. "And this year seeing it, I was here last year. I saw it already."
You have to learn how to win; you have to learn how to get hit. There's usually no better way to learn than by doing. I'm thinking about Connor McDavid, whose two assists helped burnish his MVP case, and I'm thinking about previous greats. Gretzky lost his first trip to the Final, then came back the next year in a rematch with the Islanders and won. Crosby lost his first trip to the Final, then came back the next year for a rematch with the Red Wings, and lifted the Cup. Now here's McDavid and Draisaitl and all the other Oilers, who fought so long and so hard only to run into the Panthers machine, and here they are again for the rematch, and maybe it's not so intimidating this time. Maybe they remember how to draw blood. Maybe they believe they can bleed, and it doesn't mean they can't still fight back. Maybe they know that down doesn't have to be for the count. The Panthers, who got their own longing glimpse of the Cup in 2023, had to learn this stuff too.
Round 1 goes to Edmonton. But it's a long fight.
