A year ago, when the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers met in the Stanley Cup final, they were opposites in everything from climate, market and franchise history to deep-run experience and toughness.
Since Florida won that series in seven games for its first championship, much has changed to make these opponents much more alike.
The Panthers have added talent and skill, and the Oilers have gotten older and become harder to play against. Those changes set the stage for a compelling rematch. Game 1 is Wednesday in Edmonton at 8 p.m. ET.
“These are the two nastiest teams left,” 2003 Cup winner Mike Rupp said. “They don’t seem to get rattled, they play with a lot of intensity, sometimes they cross the line. They just defend well. There’s a lot of things that they’re different than one another about, but at the core of it, they’re pretty similar to each other.”
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl haven’t gone anywhere, but they’ve also been through the heartbreak of forcing Game 7 against the Panthers and falling short of the goal they’ve been hunting over the past decade together. With Trent Frederic, Jeff Skinner, John Klingberg and Jake Walman, the Oilers are bigger and more seasoned for this.
“They’re meaner,” said retired defenceman Jason Demers, who like Rupp is now an NHL Network analyst. “They have a little bite to their game, a lot more bite than last year where they were a little bit more speedy.”
Florida can be speedy, opportunistic and dangerous, and has been over the past few post-seasons, winning 10 of 11 series since head coach Paul Maurice took over and winger Matthew Tkachuk arrived after a trade from Calgary.
The Panthers are in the final for a third consecutive year, losing to Vegas in 2023 only after Tkachuk, defenceman Aaron Ekblad and others were banged up to the point that they had nothing left in the tank. They were the underdog back then.
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With one successful Cup run complete and with Seth Jones and Brad Marchand added to the core led by Tkachuk and captain Aleksander Barkov, they now look unstoppable.
“They’re a heck of a team,” McDavid said after beating Dallas to win the Western Conference Final. “Obviously, it’s their third finals. They’re a special group. We’re a special group. It’s going to be fun.”
It also could be physical. The Oilers lost hard-nosed winger Zach Hyman to a long-term injury late in the series against the Stars, but they are more prepared now to play the rough-and-tumble style Florida has won with.
The fact that it’s a rematch in the final – the NHL’s first since Pittsburgh beat Detroit in the second of their back-to-backs in 2009 – only spices things up. There have only been four rematches in the Final since 1968.
“I don’t think there’ll be any weeding out or wading into that series,” Demers said. “I think it’s going to be gun shot, explosions right off the bat.”
Going down two games to none last year led to McDavid’s profanity-laced outburst in the locker room, a moment caught on cameras that wasn’t quite enough to turn around the series. The memory of going down 3-0, clawing back to cross the continent again for a Game 7 and not winning is still fresh in his mind.
The Oilers have been through that trip to the final and feel the pain now, something the Panthers endured before winning. Now it’s time to see if they learn the same lesson and change the result.
“Edmonton now, I think they needed to experience last year to get to where they’re at now and they’re kind of unflappable,” Rupp said. “I think that’s a weapon for them.”
Florida’s Aleksander Barkov thought the team meeting was over. He found it odd that the Panthers hadn’t been told they could leave.
Turns out, there was a good reason — two of them, actually.
The Panthers hadn’t had an opportunity to spend any time at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, a facility Barkov works with and raises money for, during their playoff run, so the team decided to bring some of the patients into the team facility for a visit instead. And the kids came bearing gifts for Barkov.
“I thought maybe some picture, some art that they had drawn for me,” Barkov said.
He hopped over the back row of seats in the Panthers’ theatre-style meeting room and went down to meet the kids. And imagine his surprise when the “gifts” were brought in — first the King Clancy Trophy that gets awarded to the player that combines leadership on and off the ice with humanitarian work, then the Selke Trophy that gets presented to the NHL’s best defensive forward.
The awards were technically awarded to Barkov last week; they were announced by the NHL on Monday. It’s the third Selke for Barkov, and the first King Clancy.
“It was amazing,” Barkov told The Associated Press. “I got a little emotional there. I didn’t really have words to say. That was very nicely done, and I was really thankful for everyone who was part of it.”
The NHL is announcing the winners of top individual awards a little differently this year, adding surprise elements with only a handful of people knowing what is happening ahead of time. The NHL and TNT had cameras and microphones inside the team meeting room for the Barkov announcement, which might have been a sign that something unusual was happening that day.
“Another speech?” Barkov asked, still holding the Clancy as his teammates remained standing and applauded again. “Thanks a lot, again. Couldn’t have been done without you guys. Love you guys, and we still have a job to do.”
That job is winning another Stanley Cup.
