✨🔩2024 Stanley Cup Finals: Edmonton vs Florida: Panthers Stanley Cup Champions 🔩✨ (FLA Wins 4-3)

[GratefulFlyers]

4 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

Edmonton's looking to win 4 straight!

 

yep this one is pretty much a done deal. The Oilers finally put up some goals but you don't expect to win giving up 4 goals. They came close, made a game of it - but they waited till 15mins elapsed in the 3rd to do it! lol...

[NHL HHOF]

Florida is going to win the Stanley Cup in Edmonton.

[radoran]

I didn't know about the depth of the Oilers' injuries, and I'm not at all sad that EKane isn't going to be on the Cup.

 

Also very much like Barkov and the way the Panthers have shown you need top tier talent to build around - in their case a 1/2 overall pick - and with enough stupidity of other GMs, you can build a team!

 

I'd like to argue against this idea, but I'm pretty sure some Senior Hockey Advisors hope someone will hire Chuck Fletcher again.

 

Edited June 14 by radoran

[NHL HHOF]

 

 

[Brewin Flames]

Florida's puck retrieval is just tenacious...

[Brewin Flames]

Oilers on brink after stumbling in Game 3 of Stanley Cup Final

Panthers take advantage of miscues, score 3 goals in 2nd period

ByMike Zeisberger

@Zeisberger NHL.com Staff Writer

1:23 AM

EDMONTON -- It’s been 264 days since the Edmonton Oilers opened training camp on Sept. 21 with the unified goal of winning the Stanley Cup.

It took just 379 seconds Thursday for that dream to potentially fizzle.

 

In that span -- which converts to 6:19 of hockey time on the scoreboard clock at Rogers Place -- a series of Oilers blunders turned a 1-1 game Edmonton had at times dominated into a 4-1 deficit.

 

And despite a valiant third period comeback attempt, the Oilers find themselves in dire straits after a 4-3 defeat to the Florida Panthers in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final that has them down 3-0 in this best-of-7 series. 

 

Only one team in NHL history has overcome a three-game deficit in the Final to win the Stanley Cup, that being the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs.

 

And unless the Oilers can repeat that magic of 82 years ago, they can point to their fumbling, bumbling and stumbling midway through the second period as the brief window in time where their aspirations of the franchise’s first championship since 1990 evaporated.

 

As forward Leon Draisaitl aptly put it: “It’s very frustrating."

 

“I thought we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit today," he said. "We made some individual and collective mistakes that they immediately took advantage of.”

 

That pretty much sums up the situation.

 

 

 

Ironically, momentum seemed to be on the Oilers side when Warren Foegele tied the game 1-1 for Edmonton at 1:49 of the second period.

 

They kept pushing and pushing for the lead, only to be repeatedly stopped by Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, including an outstanding right pad save of a backhand by the Oilers Dylan Holloway.

 

Cue the disaster.

 

The Panthers gobbled up the rebound and got the puck into the neutral zone, where forward Anton Lundell dumped it along the boards deep into the Edmonton end.

 

Goalie Stuart Skinner went behind the net to play the puck.

 

Or, in this instance, try to. Instead, he and defenseman Cody Ceci failed to corral the puck, allowing Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen to grab it and feed teammate Vladimir Tarasenko for the go-ahead goal at 9:12.

 

Consider the floodgates officially opened.

 

“I tried to play the puck,” Skinner said. “I don't know if it bounced over (my stick), I’m not too sure exactly what happened. They got the puck, passed it out front, I tried to get that one as well and tried to make the save.

 

“All those three things did not work.”

 

The Panthers regained the lead 2-1.

 

There was more to come.

 

Just over four minutes later, Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse was stripped of the puck to the left of Skinner by Panthers forward Sam Bennett. One quick pass from Matthew Tkachuk to Bennett later and Edmonton found itself trailing 3-1 at 13:57.

 

The mishaps didn’t end there.

 

At 15:31, Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov upped Florida’s lead to 4-1 when he converted a nice 2-on-1 opportunity with linemate Evan Rodrigues.

The cause of the odd-man rush? Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm had pinched on the play and was caught in the Panthers zone when the play turned the other way.

 

Game. Set. Match. And, potentially, season.

 

“After they got that second one, they just kind of got on a roll,” Skinner said. “We let them take that momentum and stride with it. They got two more quick ones -- just kind of silly mistakes that didn't need to happen.”

 

But they did, leaving the Oilers with zero margin for error heading into Game 4 on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, CBC, TVAS, SN, ESPN+).

[Brewin Flames]

I'll say it again....Nurse and Ceci are both terrible, and when you have that kind of lackluster suck defense in front of a inept netminder in Skinner the results will not often end well.

 

Hyman, Leon and McJesus have also been none existent as well.

[pilldoc]

Wow…. I honestly thought this series would be closer when I picked the Oilers in 7. 
 

Oh how wrong I was. 

[SaucyJack]

2 hours ago, pilldoc said:

thought this series would be closer when I picked the Oilers in 7. 
 

Oh how wrong I was. 

Sometimes it seems a team can run out of gas after looking so good in the first 3 rounds.

 

It reminds me of 2018.  Rookie team Vegas impresses in the first 3 rounds and then beats Washington in Game 1.  After that, a pretty darn good but not fantastic Capitals team win the next four somewhat handily.  I remember how we had to struggle so much to win 3 rounds then a relative cruise in the final.

[pilldoc]

40 minutes ago, SaucyJack said:

Sometimes it seems a team can run out of gas after looking so good in the first 3 rounds.

 

It reminds me of 2018.  Rookie team Vegas impresses in the first 3 rounds and then beats Washington in Game 1.  After that, a pretty darn good but not fantastic Capitals team win the next four somewhat handily.  I remember how we had to struggle so much to win 3 rounds then a relative cruise in the final.

 

You also don't win games when your top 5 scorers of the season don't score ......

 

McDavid / Draisaitl / RHN / Hyman / Bouchard have exactly ZERO goals .....  That is the series in a nutshell.

Edited June 14 by pilldoc

[GratefulFlyers]

I'm not so sure the Oilers are out of gas. They've been fast on the puck, blazing through the neutral zone all 3 games. The coverage mistakes killed them.

 

And then there's Bob. Ekholm's goal in G2 off a 3-on-1 got by him somehow and that's the only one that was maybe a little "iffy."

[NHL HHOF]

 

 

 

[NHL HHOF]

 

[NHL HHOF]

 

 

 

[NHL HHOF]

 

 

[FD19372]

The Panthers are playing the Oilers perfectly on defense, and it is clearly frustrating the hell out of the Oilers. Their defense is very mobile and quick on the puck, and it shows. Dallas has Heiskanen and Harley, but they weren't able to move the puck anywhere near as effectively as the Panthers. The Florida forwards backcheck and defend, very effectively. This is more about what they have been able to do, and how well Maurice has coached them, then it is a flaw of the Oilers. This Panthers team learned a ton from last year's finals loss. Discipline and defense, particularly.

[FD19372]

Oh, also...the Cats have Bob, who..no offense to Skinner, is on his way to MVP and probably the Hockey Hall Of Fame. He is a much better goalie than Skinner at this point, though I don't blame him at all, for how his team is performing.

[flyerrod]

5 hours ago, pilldoc said:

Wow…. I honestly thought this series would be closer when I picked the Oilers in 7. 
 

Oh how wrong I was. 

On the bright side, should some miracle(S) occur, you will be correct.

[GratefulFlyers]

@FD19372

 

Well the Oilers have made some seriously bad plays - esp last night. And at the worst times. Credit Maurice and the Panthers but the Oilers gave that game away.

 

Tie game, momentum is with Edmonton and Skinner turns it over ... quick feed to Tarasenko and it's 2-1. A few shifts later Nurse turns it over and it's 3-1.

 

But yeah the Panthers' D is the story, their D with Bobrovsky. It's just suffocating the Oilers. They're contesting everything and in front of Bobrovsky it's like ... fuggedaboutit. Lifting sticks, boxing out, the Oilers aren't getting a sniff at 2nd chances. It's like a clinic on how to protect your net.

 

Bob is anticipating, waiting for Draisaitl's one-timer and makes it an easy save. Draisaitl makes a living scoring from the dot but Bobrovsky has him cold. Even on the PP he's ahead of the Oilers. I hope he does make the HOF - IMHO he deserves it. 2 Vezinas, now on the cusp of a dominating SCF performance...

[flyerrod]

30 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

Oh, also...the Cats have Bob, who..no offense to Skinner, is on his way to MVP and probably the Hockey Hall Of Fame. He is a much better goalie than Skinner at this point, though I don't blame him at all, for how his team is performing.

Sergei’s first quote after the game will be “I want to thank the Flyers for trading me away from a truly mediocre team “.  
All kidding aside, Bob is so far into the Oilers heads when not only his outstanding performance is laced with Hasek type luck but the injured Oilers have nothing left in the tank. Short of someone flat out skating directly into and taking Bob out of the game, this series is truly over.

[pilldoc]

1 hour ago, flyerrod said:

Sergei’s first quote after the game will be “I want to thank the Flyers for trading me away from a truly mediocre team “.  

 

[NHL HHOF]

 

[NHL HHOF]

Florida is going to win the Stanley Cup!

Edited June 14 by NHL HHOF

[NHL HHOF]

 

[NHL HHOF]