With two goals in Game 1 of Stanley Cup Final, Sam Bennett makes Panthers history
Sam Bennett has made Florida Panthers history.
With his second goal of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, Bennett now has 12 goals this postseason.
That's the most by a Panthers player in a single postseason.
Matthew Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe were tied for the previous record with 11 each, Tkachuk setting the mark in the 2023 postseason and Verhaeghe matching it in the 2024 playoffs.
Even more impressive: 11 of Bennett's 12 goals have come on the road. That ties the NHL record for most road goals in a single postseason, matching Mark Scheifele's record set in 2018.
This story will be updated.
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New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
Brad Marchand in '25 and Ray Bourque in '01: A breakdown of ex-Bruins and the Stanley Cup
Brad Marchand's quest to win the Stanley Cup as a member of the Florida Panthers has inspired a nostalgia-fueled discussion about something that happened in 2001 with his old team, the Boston Bruins. But even if you're not a Bruins fan, even if you hate the Bruins, you may know what I'm talking about. Advertisement It goes something like this: Marchand is an aging ex-Bruin playing for the Panthers in the 2025 Stanley Cup Final, which is not unlike what happened nearly a quarter of a century ago when the great Raymond Bourque was an aging ex-Bruin playing for the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup Final. There are, of course, major differences between what Marchand is trying to accomplish versus what Bourque accomplished in the spring of 2001, and I'll get to those differences in a moment. But I need to get this out of the way first: It's a good thing whenever we can revisit June 13, 2001, which was the day Ray Bourque of the newly crowned Avalanche stepped out to a balcony at Boston's City Hall Plaza to be cheered by the thousands of Bruins fans who turned out for the occasion. How Bourque came to be holding the Stanley Cup over his head at City Hall Plaza is a story with all kinds of twists and turns, not to mention a years-later rollout of long-simmering grievances. Rather than rehash it all here, I invite you to read the oral history I wrote for The Athletic in 2021 commemorating the 20th anniversary of the event. I interviewed some 15 people back then, including Bourque and former Bruins president Harry Sinden, and everybody was remarkably candid and anecdotal. In short, the Bruins did Bourque a solid on March 6, 2000, when they traded the legendary defenseman to the Avalanche. The Bruins were rebuilding and Bourque had yet to win a Cup, and the trade was designed to be win-win for everybody. The Avalanche didn't make it to the Cup final that year, but they won it all a year later, toppling the New Jersey Devils. In an instant-classic hockey moment, Avalanche captain Joe Sakic was handed the Stanley Cup by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and immediately handed it off to Bourque, lest there be any doubt as to the identity of the most emotional man in the building. Advertisement Six days later, there stood Bourque at City Hall Plaza. It was an idea hatched by the office of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, after which it bounced to Bourque's agent, Steve Freyer, and then to Bourque himself. A call was placed to Sinden, who was fishing in Maine. He wasn't one bit happy about this City Hall Plaza idea. Again, read the original piece. But know this: While there may have been some hard feelings about the event, there were no villains. Everybody shook hands and went on with their lives. And I'll let you in on a secret: Bourque originally didn't want to be interviewed for the story but then said he'd take part only if Sinden agreed to be interviewed. To my surprise — and, I guess, to Bourque's surprise — Sinden did the interview. And away we went. I'm forever grateful to both men. So there. Thanks for indulging me as I invite you to read a story that was written at a time when we were all just beginning to dust ourselves off from the pandemic. (In fact, every interview I did was over the phone.) Now, back to Marchand. How is his pursuit of the Stanley Cup different from Bourque's 2001 vision quest with the Avalanche? Let us count the ways: • As a member of the 2010-11 Bruins, Marchand has already played on a Stanley Cup winner. The trade that sent him to Florida was not a goodwill gesture by Bruins GM Don Sweeney. The Bruins had tried to work out a contract extension; failing that, they dealt him to the Panthers, who were loading up for another Cup run. • Whereas it was not surprising when the 40-year-old Bourque retired after winning the Cup, Marchand has no plans to go gently into that good night. (Not that he's ever gone gently anywhere.) Marchand will be a free agent after this Cup final has ended, and as The Athletic's Chris Johnston points out, 'To say that the 37-year-old has boosted his market value this postseason is an understatement.' • Is Marchand a Hall of Famer? Well, yes, says me. But it's a discussion worth having. In fact, if you google 'Brad Marchand' and 'Hall of Fame,' you'll be directed to dozens of these very discussions. Bourque, on the other hand, is hockey royalty. In The Athletic's countdown of the top 99 players in modern NHL history, he came in at No. 10. Advertisement • Marchand has baggage. Bourque arrives for this discussion without even a carry-on. Put another way, Marchand has boiled the blood of many hockey fans over the years, from licking the faces of opposing players to speed-bagging the Vancouver Canucks' Daniel Sedin during the 2011 Cup final. Bourque? When Sakic handed him the Cup that night in Denver, it was one of hockey's all-time feel-good moments. If/when the Panthers repeat as champions, and if/when team captain Sasha Barkov hands the Cup to Marchand, crushed beer cans will be landing on flat screens across North America. Brad Marchand was one heck of a trade deadline pickup — The Hockey News (@TheHockeyNews) June 5, 2025 • While many Boston fans would enjoy seeing Marchand play on a Cup winner, it means rooting for the Panthers, which means rooting for the team that pushed the Bruins out of the playoffs (while also pushing them around) in 2023 and '24. There were no such hard feelings with the Avalanche when Bourque won his Cup. I suppose one could go all the way back to the days when the Avalanche were doing business as the Quebec Nordiques and get re-upset over Boston-born, future NHL referee Paul Stewart running up 27 penalty minutes (including an epic fight with Stan Jonathan) in Quebec's 7-4 loss to the Bruins on Nov. 22, 1979, at the Old Garden, but that's next-level grudge-holding. The Nordiques also knocked the Bruins out of the playoffs in 1982, but c'mon. • For Bourque to bring the Cup to City Hall of Plaza in 2001 made it possible for fans everywhere else to crow that things were so bad in Boston that their fans had been reduced to celebrating another city's championship. At the time, no Boston team had won a championship since the 1985-86 Celtics, nor had any Boston team played so much as a postseason game in nearly two years. Marchand is welcome to bring the Stanley Cup to Boston should the Panthers recover from their Game 1 overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers and win it all, but he shouldn't expect Mayor Michelle Wu to order up a party. The Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins have combined to win 13 championships since the day Bourque held the Stanley Cup over his head.
New York Times
29 minutes ago
- New York Times
Sami Kapanen on son Kasperi's Oilers surge and the ‘opportunity of a lifetime' to grow a family legacy
EDMONTON — Watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in the wee hours of the morning from his home in Finland, Sami Kapanen could hardly believe his eyes. He'd seen that stat line before. He'd seen that result before. It was exactly 23 years to the day, in fact, since the only other time someone carrying Finland's most famous hockey family's name had the chance to get it engraved in the rounded silver edges of the Cup. Advertisement 'Scary,' Sami told The Athletic on Thursday. 'It's scary how much is the same.' Consider that he was a 28-year-old forward playing for the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2002 Cup Final against the Detroit Red Wings. That series began on June 4. He had a big hand in the Hurricanes' victory at Joe Louis Arena to open the best-of-seven. 'Game 1, we won in overtime,' he recalled. 'I had two assists.' On Wednesday, he watched from afar as his son Kasperi, a 28-year-old forward with the Edmonton Oilers, picked up two assists in an uplifting overtime victory over the Florida Panthers. History sometimes rhymes. The respective stat lines from their Stanley Cup debuts are eerily similar: Sami Kapanen, June 4, 2002: Two assists, two shots, 23 shifts, 21:22 ice time Kasperi Kapanen, June 4, 2025: Two assists, two shots, 26 shifts, 20:28 ice time Of course, both father and son hope the similarities end there. Sami's Hurricanes dropped the next four games to Detroit in 2002, and he still carries regrets about the experience. He picked up a gruesome injury that season when two six-inch pieces of fiberglass from a broken stick embedded in his palm just before the Olympic break. He never got his game on track during the playoffs that followed, scoring just once in 23 games following a 27-goal regular season. He was shouldering a heavy weight during what wound up being the only Cup Final appearance of a 12-year NHL career. 'I wish I could go back and just play,' Sami said Thursday. 'Just enjoy it. Don't worry about the numbers.' There are certainly some lessons to be found in there for Kasperi, a 2014 first-round pick who has twice been claimed off waivers during a twisting career in which he's never quite made good on his potential. That's how Kapanen arrived in Edmonton from the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 19, and he viewed the latest trip through the waiver wire as a potential make-or-break proposition on his NHL career. Advertisement To see the way he played Wednesday, you'd have trouble believing going on waivers was even possible. Kapanen used his speed to get in on the forecheck and disrupt the Panthers with some effective hits in Game 1 and split through defensemen Niko Mikkola and Seth Jones to create a partial breakaway in overtime before ringing a shot off the outside of the right post behind Sergei Bobrovsky. Couple that with his two assists, and it was about all you could ask for from a depth forward who spent nine games in the press box to open these playoffs for Edmonton. 'He's gaining more and more confidence by the period right now,' said Sami, adding that he doesn't think he's seen his son play this well since he was Evgeni Malkin's linemate in Pittsburgh during the 2021 season. Sami described Kasperi as an 'emotional player' who needs to feel the trust of his coach to perform at his best. Everything started to fall into place, he said, after the series-clinching overtime goal Kasperi scored to finish off the Vegas Golden Knights in Round 2. 'He kind of showed himself that 'I've still got it,'' said Sami. 'When he feels good, good things happen.' Kapanen the younger has scored more than his share of massive goals, from the overtime winner in Helsinki to win Finland a gold at the 2016 World Juniors to a double-overtime playoff winner for the Toronto Maple Leafs in Washington as an NHL rookie in 2017 to his series-clincher against Vegas. The Oilers pursued Kapanen as a free agent last summer, when he chose instead to remain with the Blues on a one-year contract. When he arrived off waivers, he found an incredibly close team of committed professionals who helped him rediscover his love of the game. 'It was just an eye-opener,' Kapanen said. 'It lit a fire under me. Just my love for the game has just grown ever since I've come here.' Advertisement By pursuing a career in hockey, he essentially got into the family business. His grandfather, Hannu, played for Finland at the 1976 Olympics, and Kasperi counts time spent in the Philadelphia Flyers dressing room with Peter Forsberg, Mike Richards and Jeff Carter among his childhood memories because of Sami's 831-game NHL career. The Kapanen Clan — as they're known in Finnish — are the only hockey family in the world that have had five different members represent the national team at a major international tournament. They are heavily invested in possibly seeing that name etched into the Stanley Cup this summer. 'I come from a pretty big hockey family,' Kasperi said. 'So after games, it's usually mom, dad, uncle, grandma, grandpa, cousins who will text me. It's a little overwhelming at times. They're just happy that I'm finally here and I've got a chance to win.' Sami hasn't allowed himself to start dreaming about what a Stanley Cup party might look like back home in Kuopio if the Oilers manage to finish the job. He doesn't want to get ahead of himself. He plans to travel to Edmonton to watch Game 5 of this series from the stands at Rogers Place and will continue pulling all-nighters from Finland to watch the other games on TV in the meantime. 'I'm so excited,' Sami said. 'I can see it. His game is coming. It's getting better and better. There's so many things that are kind of clicking right now. 'It's the opportunity of a lifetime and that's the time that you want to perform.' (Top photos of Sami and Kasperi Kapanen: Elsa and Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
New York Times
29 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Oilers' nuclear option: Do they keep Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl together?
EDMONTON — To be clear, there is no wrong answer. But it's been the eternal debate in these parts going back several years and several Edmonton Oilers coaching staffs: Do you load up Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on one line or keep them apart to spread out the offense? Yes and yes. Or perhaps more succinctly, it depends. Advertisement 'They like playing together, but the team needs them split up,' former Oilers head coach Ken Hitchcock told The Athletic on Thursday. 'But when it's crunch time and there needs to be a change in the way the game is being played and you put those two guys together, it makes all kinds of sense. Playing them apart balances everything, but they are almost unstoppable when they are together.'' So, yes and yes. 'It is a great tool to use as a momentum-changer, matchup-breaker or, as a coach would say, 'tilt the ice in our favor,'' former Oilers head coach Dave Tippett told The Athletic. 'They are both very smart players who love playing together but also recognize the advantages to the team when they are apart. The debate shouldn't be, 'Should they play together or apart?' It is, 'What is the best situation for the team to win at any point in the game?'' Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch inherited this wonderful dilemma when he took over as head coach in November of 2023, and he's felt his way through it. On Wednesday night, down in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers, he chose the nuclear option. And it absolutely changed the momentum and tilted the ice. But it's not something he's tried to overuse. 'I've done it throughout the playoffs, mid-game or third period — they have just gone off and scored at a tremendous rate,' the Oilers head coach said Thursday when I asked him about it. 'A couple of big games in the L.A. series. There's also games where they've started together and played well but haven't scored like you would expect. I don't know. I think it's important when Leon is playing center. It spreads out our scoring a little bit and also gets him in the game a little bit more. He's skating and involved. 'It allows the rest of our team (to know) that they've got a role. They've got to play well, and we're not just relying on this one line that's going to do all the work. Yeah, I don't know. It's nice to know when those two get together mid-game that the results are pretty good. But it's something that we can't rely on.' Advertisement That is why I would expect 97 and 29 to be split up when Game 2 starts Friday night. But there's always the break-the-glass option to reunite them. 'Kris seems to spread the workload a little more,' a Western Conference head coach, who requested anonymity, said Thursday when I asked him about the nuclear option. 'What I've noticed is that when they separate them, they get more from the wingers. I always find (Ryan) Nugent-Hopkins a better player with McDavid than if he has to drive his own line. It's the same with (Kasperi) Kapanen. He wasn't even in the lineup, but when he's playing with Draisaitl, that's the end-result benefit of spreading the two big guys. 'The product of their top two lines when they're apart is better than when they're together on one line. But I mean, obviously when they're together, it's a huge challenge.' And perhaps part of the reason the Oilers get immediate results when they do it mid-game is that it also can catch opponents off-guard and force them to react. Consider this from The Athletic's analytics expert Dom Luszczyszyn: 'In these playoffs, the Oilers have paired their two superstars on 17 percent of five-on-five shifts — a marked shift from last year's playoffs, where they only shared the ice 10 percent of the time. There are two key reasons for that, both of which rely on trust. 'The first is the team trusting its depth to contribute offensively without risking the puck going the other way. Over their previous three playoffs, according to Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers without McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice generated only 2.2 expected goals per 60 minutes and scored even fewer: 1.7. This year, both are way up: 2.7 expected goals per 60 and 3.0 goals per 60. The depth is delivering when it counts, leading to 66 percent of the goals. Over the past three playoffs, they were at 41 percent. Advertisement 'The second is the team trusting its franchise stars to shut things down defensively. Not that it was a problem for the Oilers over the last few years, but the shift in their chance suppression is something to behold. 'When McDavid and Draisaitl are on the ice together, they're generating the same 3.9 expected goals per 60 minutes as usual, but their expected goals against rate has dropped considerably, from 2.7 over the past three playoffs to 2.1 this year. For further context, that's the exact amount Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart — this year's first- and second-place Selke finalists — have allowed for Florida during the playoffs this year and last. 'If defense wins championships, McDavid and Draisaitl got the memo.' Case in point: With the Oilers nursing a lead going into the third period of Game 3 versus Dallas in the Western Conference final, Knoblauch chose to load up McDavid and Draisaitl, obviously not looking for offense as much as puck possession and to spend less time in their own zone after being caved in by Dallas in the second period. It worked swimmingly as the Oilers shut down the Stars en route to another win. Panthers head coach Paul Maurice has coached against it many times, so he's ready when it happens. 'Well, at some point, because they're together, you have a better indicator of when they're coming off the bench,' he said Thursday. 'It's slightly more of a challenge on the road. So you need to have more than one line (to match up) against them. So the third goal (from Mattias Ekholm, set up by McDavid in Game 1), it was the end of the shift and into the next shift, so you need to have more than one line coming off the bench. Other than that, you just have to go out and play.'' Easier said than done, of course. Consider this last little nugget from Dom regarding 97 and 29 together in Game 1: 'Barkov and Reinhart played 8:01 against McDavid and Draisaitl. Shot attempts were 14-4 Edmonton during that, expected goals were 0.42-0.14 Edmonton per 60 minutes (3-1 Edmonton, basically).'' Advertisement So, yeah. 'They play incredibly well together,' Oilers winger Evander Kane said Thursday. 'They read off each other well. They have different skill sets that elevate their skill sets together. At certain times in the game, the coaching staff likes to go to that. It's on the rest of the group to step up and contribute as well when you don't have them going 1-2 down the middle. I thought we did a good job of that in the latter half of the game.'' That's the biggest difference: that the drop-off isn't as dramatic as in years past. There's depth now to hold the fort when the load-up scenario is in play. The reality is that when the younger Oilers were doing it when Hitchcock was behind the bench, it was a thinner squad. 'Yeah, well, for me, they were the best two players and it was just survival when I was doing it,' Hitchcock chuckled. 'We needed that element in our game. Whereas now, they've got guys that can really bring it and are good players. They can afford to spread it out a little bit more and have more offense.'' Load them up or not? Here and there. That's the way. (Top photo of Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
