Revenge or reprise? 'Mature' Oilers poised for Cup final rematch with battle-tested Panthers

Joshua Clipperton · The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 30, 2025 1:40 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

The Oilers were crestfallen. Heads sank into hands. Tears flowed from reddened eyes.

Edmonton's bloodied and bearded roster had fixed everything successful the Stanley Cup final.

The gutsy, backs-against-the-wall effort — valiant successful erasing a 3-0 bid shortage to unit Game 7 — came up conscionable abbreviated 12 months ago.

The team's core, led by superstar skipper Connor McDavid, vowed that sweltering Florida nighttime aft falling to the Panthers that they would beryllium backmost connected the aforesaid stage.

"It's been a privation since the extremity of past year," Corey Perry, the Oilers' greybeard winger, said of a instrumentality to the NHL's rubric series. "There's been a batch of reasoning astir what happened past year, and self-reflecting.

"Here we are."

The Oilers, it turns out, were right.

Edmonton volition marque a 2nd consecutive quality successful the Cup last aft beating the Dallas Stars 4-1 successful the Western Conference final. And Florida, erstwhile again, is waiting.

"It was connected our caput since we mislaid that past game," Oilers caput manager Kris Knoblauch said of his team's mission. "It was a long, pugnacious summer, grooming camp, regular season."

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The squad from Alberta's superior didn't person its champion for stretches of that 82-game schedule. Edmonton finished 3rd successful the Pacific Division pursuing a rash of injuries down the agelong and fell down 0-2 to the Los Angeles Kings successful the archetypal circular of the playoffs.

All the nine has done since? Put up a 12-2 people successful rebounding with 4 consecutive wins against the Kings earlier getting past some the Vegas Golden Knights and the Stars successful 5 games.

And dissimilar past outpouring erstwhile the Oilers, who big Game 1 of the Cup last Wednesday, relied heavy connected the contributions of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl — to beryllium clear, the 2 headliners person again been fantabulous — the radical has got goals from 19 antithetic players successful this post-season.

A rebuilt defence corps, meanwhile, weathered the nonaccomplishment of Mattias Ekholm, backmost from wounded for Thursday's 6-3 triumph successful Game 5 implicit Dallas aft fundamentally 2 months connected the shelf, portion the goaltending of Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard has travel up immense erstwhile needed.

"Some teams get truly blistery coming down the agelong and they thrust it each the mode done the playoffs," McDavid said precocious Thursday nighttime successful the bowels of a cavernous American Airlines Center. "For us, it's travel unneurotic successful the playoffs. We've been gathering and gathering and gathering our game.

"Our champion hockey is inactive successful beforehand of us."

Edmonton had already ridden a chaotic roller-coaster by this constituent past year. This tally feels different.

"The archetypal clip you spell done it, there's a ton of joyousness and excitement," Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse said of winning 3 playoff rounds. "And determination is now, don't get maine wrong, but there's besides a hunger and knowing what's coming and the accidental that's ahead. We're each excited."

"Those games tin beryllium emotionally draining," McDavid added. "We're not drained — we've got tons of depth. We've got arsenic bully a accidental arsenic they do."

That would beryllium the nasty, battle-tested Panthers — successful a 3rd consecutive last aft steamrolling the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1, bossing the Toronto Maple Leafs successful Game 7, and disposing of the Carolina Hurricanes successful five.

"We cognize what they're about," Draisaitl said. "We played them 7 times. It's bully to get a changeable astatine getting immoderate revenge, but we're a agelong ways from that."

Knoblauch said his players are wiser arsenic they pivot to an hostile led by Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Sergei Bobrovsky and Brad Marchand making its 3rd consecutive Cup appearance.

"This is simply a mature group," the second-year seat brag said of Edmonton. "They're older. They've seen a batch of playoff hockey. They cognize what they request to bash to get it done."

The task, however, remains daunting.

"If it's going to change, we're going to play our champion hockey," Knoblauch added. "We person a chance, but we're going to person to beryllium astatine our best."

The Oilers person been beauteous adjacent to that already successful these playoffs. Now they request more.