For the NHL, it's Caturday
The Florida Panthers won a dramatic Game 7 against the Edmonton Oilers for the franchise's first Stanley Cup championship.
The best team won the Stanley Cup.
Not by much, it appears, if you look only at the score. The final count in an intense, well-played Game 7 was 2-1 for the Florida Panthers over the Edmonton Oilers, yet the difference between the teams went beyond what was displayed on the scoreboard while players hugged and celebrated Monday at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Fla.
Pushed to the brink of a historic collapse by the Oilers, who had won three straight games to force the decider on Monday, the Panthers regrouped and recommitted to playing the defensive game that was their foundation. They were physical. Decisive. Relentless. They seized a moment they knew might never come again. Success at that moment was beyond the grasp of the Oilers, who had been forced to expend enormous amounts of physical and emotional energy just to get to that Game 7.
“It was perfect Florida Panthers fashion. Nothing’s easy,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said after his first Cup triumph as a coach and the first for the franchise, which entered the NHL as an expansion team in 1993 under the ownership of Wayne Huizenga, founder of the now nearly extinct Blockbuster Video chain.
Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk, son of former NHL forward Keith Tkachuk and the emotional leader of his team, was wonderfully thoughtful in a postgame interview with ABC’s Emily Kaplan. He was an island of calm, standing apart while his teammates and their families embraced and kissed and screamed and gathered their kids to pose for photos with the Cup.
“It’s not a dream anymore,” said Tkachuk, whose father—who never won the Cup in a distinguished career—was seen weeping in the stands. “It’s not a dream. It’s reality.”
With the score 1-1 late in the second period Monday, the Oilers pressed furiously in the Panthers’ zone. Florida defenseman Dmitry Kulikov managed to move the puck away from his net and got it up to Carter Verhaeghe, who fed Sam Reinhart for what turned out to be the Cup-clinching goal against Stuart Skinner, at 15:11.
“We were an inch away from going ahead,” a downcast Connor McDavid said in a postgame TV interview. “We were right there. Right there.”
He and the Oilers learned there’s a huge difference between being “right there” and getting the job done, as the Panthers managed to do.
The Oilers are talented enough and young enough and led well enough by coach Kris Knoblauch to return to the Final in the coming years. It’s easy to imagine them being the team that skates around the rink on hockey’s happiest journey, bathed in tears, sweat and a flood of emotions.
They bonded and grew up this season while they rebounded from a terrible start under then-coach Jay Woodcroft, finishing second in the Pacific division. They brushed off the Kings in five games in the first round, twice fended off elimination in seven games against Vancouver, and took care of Dallas in six games before they faced Florida.
They fought off elimination three times against Florida but that last ascent from contender to champion is the toughest to navigate, and the Oilers weren’t ready to scale that mountain yet. The Panthers, no doubt building on the lessons and experience they gained from losing to Vegas in the 2023 Cup Final, were prepared to take that step.
The Oilers made a good attempt at coming back yet again Monday, attacking furiously late in the third period, but Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and his teammates were up to the challenge. The Panthers held McDavid—who broke Wayne Gretzky’s single-playoff assist record with 34 helpers and led all scorers with 42 points—without a point on Monday. They had blanked him in Game 6, too. Florida also took care of Leon Draisaitl, who had scored 41 goals and 106 points during the regular season but scored no goals and recorded merely three assists in the Final.
McDavid was voted the winner of the Conn Smythe trophy as the most valuable player in postseason play. But by the time NHL Commissioner Gary (Always Booed) Bettman made that announcement, McDavid had gone to the Oilers’ locker room. He didn’t return to the ice to accept the trophy, which has gone to a member of the team that lost the Final only six times.
The previous Conn Smythe winners recognized for their excellence in a losing cause were Detroit goaltender Roger Crozier in 1966, St. Louis goalie Glenn Hall in 1968, Philadelphia forward Reggie Leach in 1976, Philadelphia goalie Ron Hextall in 1987, and goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere of the then-Mighty Ducks in 2003.
That trophy meant little to McDavid. He has his eyes on the big prize. “It sucks. It sucks,” he said during a postgame TV interview. “We knew it was going to be tight, Game 7 for the Cup….They did a good job shutting things down. We had our looks. Just didn’t find it.”
If it’s any consolation to McDavid, Gretzky was on the losing side in his first Cup Final appearance, in 1983, against the New York Islanders. Gretzky and those Oilers learned from watching the Islanders how physically and mentally difficult it is to win the Cup. That helped them turn the tables on the Islanders in 1984 and win the first of their four Cup championships in five seasons. In 1990 the Oilers won for the fifth time in seven seasons, after they had traded Gretzky to the Kings.
That’s the Oilers’ most recent title. But that drought could end if McDavid and company can learn from this loss, as the 1983 Oilers and this season’s Panthers did. They now know what it takes. They have no more excuses. If the Oilers can maintain their scoring depth and upgrade on defense, they should have the best shot next season at becoming the first Canada-based team to win the Cup since the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Kings in 1993.
The Panthers, who took out Tampa Bay in five games, Boston in six, and the New York Rangers in six before facing the Oilers, earned this victory. They bent in losing Games 4, 5 and 6, but they didn’t break. They stayed on the right side of history. This was their game, their moment. They were ready for it.
“Winning the Stanley Cup was everything I could’ve imagined and more,” forward Evan Rodrigues, who led the Panthers in scoring during the Final with four goals and seven points, said in his blog on nhl.com. “We don’t like doing things the easy way, and it was all worth it in the end."
He added, “I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. It’s happiness, joy, elation, relief. I don’t even know the word to describe with I’m feeling. Bliss.”
Lifting the 34 1/2-pound Cup, which was accepted by team captain Aleksander Barkov and then handed off to Bobrovsky and then to veteran Kyle Okposo before making the rounds, was surreal for the winners. “I had no idea of how heavy it is,” said Barkov, who did some other heavy lifting by neutralizing McDavid’s line the last two games.
It was an easier burden than the Panthers would have been stuck with if they had become the second NHL team to squander a 3-0 lead in the Final. “I’ll never forget the weight of it, and how it felt,” Maurice said.
The on-ice portion of the 2023-24 season is over, but there’s plenty of business still to be done.
The NHL will announce the winners of individual trophies on Thursday; McDavid is a finalist for the Hart trophy as the regular-season MVP, Bobrovsky is a finalist for the Vezina as the best goalie, and Barkov is a finalist for the Selke trophy, as the best defensive forward. On Friday, the future comes into focus with the first day of the annual draft. San Jose holds the No. 1 pick and is expected to claim standout Boston University forward Macklin Celebrini, whose father, Rick, was a professional soccer player and is now the vice president of player health and performance for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
By Friday, the Panthers’ celebrations might have calmed down a bit. Maybe not. They earned the right to party on. They met the moment and conquered it, becoming the coolest of the cool cats.
Defense wins the Cup.
This game did not disappoint. And the moment Paul Maurice raised the cup was truly special. Fantastic finish to a really good NHL season. Great article! Looking forward to your analysis as the kings offseason moves materialize.