Examining how Panthers, Oilers stack up for Stanley Cup Final rematch
The excitement is building ahead of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final.
This year's championship series offers a rare rematch of season's epic seven-game series, which pitted the Florida Panthers against the Edmonton Oilers.
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Florida won the first three games, convincingly, before dropping the next three, even more convincingly, and eventually emerging victorious in a Game 7 the hockey gods would've been proud of.
The Panthers won that seventh game on home ice, which is a luxury they won't have this time around should the series go the distance again.
That shouldn't be an issue for these Panthers, however.
Paul Maurice's crew has been historically good on the road during this postseason, winning eight of the ten games they've played outside of Sunrise by a ridiculous goal differential of plus-27.
That's right, in those ten away games, Florida has scored an eye-popping 48 times while allowing just 21 goals against.
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Conversely, they've given up the same amount of goals at home, 18, as they have scored, which makes sense when seeing as though they hold just a 5-4 at Amerant Bank Arena.
One thing that many can agree on is that both teams arrive at this year's Final better than they were a season ago.
Edmonton is averaging a league best 4.06 goals per game this postseason while the Panthers are putting up 3.88.
Defensively, Florida is allowing 2.29 goals per game, lowest of any playoff team, while the Oilers have given up a similarly stingy 2.81.
It's to no one's surprise that Edmonton remains one of the best in the business on the power play.
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They enter the Final operating at a 30.0% success rate while on the man advantage, which is actually a tick higher than last postseason.
Florida is also executing at a higher rate during this year's playoffs than they did last year, rising from 18.5% to 23.2% this postseason.
One of the big differences from last June to now is on the penalty kill.
While the Panthers have remained consistently solid on the PK – last playoffs they killed 88.0% of penalties and this year they're killing 87.9% - it's the Oilers who have seen a significant drop-off.
Last year they were lights out, allowing only four power play goals during the entire postseason while killing 94.3% of the power plays they faced.
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We'll see if that element comes into play when the series kicks off on Wednesday night.
Puck drop is set for 8 p.m. ET from Rogers Place in Edmonton.
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Photo caption: Jun 21, 2024; Edmonton, Alberta, CAN; Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk (19) controls the puck against the Edmonton Oilers during the third period in game six of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place. (Sergei Belski-Imagn Images)
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Forbes
23 minutes ago
- Forbes
Dallas Stars Fire Pete DeBoer After NHL Coaching Vacancies Get Filled
Pete DeBoer got the Dallas Stars to the Western Conference Final in all three of his seasons behind their bench. But it wasn't enough. On Friday, the team announced that it had terminated his employment, eight days after the Stars were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in five games. 'After careful consideration, we believe that a new voice is needed in our locker room to push us closer to our goal of winning the Stanley Cup,' said general manager Jim Nill in a statement released Friday. 'We'd like to thank Pete for everything that he has helped our organization achieve over the past three seasons and wish him nothing but the best moving forward.' Over his three seasons in Dallas, DeBoer guided the Stars to a regular-season record of 149-68-29 for a .665 points percentage. And this year's playoff run came in spite of an injury that kept top defenseman Miro Heiskanen out of action until the middle of the second round while forward Jason Robertson missed all of Round 1 with a knee injury. The Stars eked out a seven-game win against the Colorado Avalanche to advance out of the first round, then took down the Presidents' Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets in six games in Round 2 before falling to the Oilers for a second-straight year. Despite his success, DeBoer's tenure in Dallas will now be best remembered for his snap decision to pull starting goaltender Jake Oettinger after the Stars fell into an early 2-0 hole in their elimination game against Edmonton last week. His defense of the decision after the game raised eyebrows across the hockey world. 'The reasoning's always to try to spark your group, so that was the No. 1 reason,' he told the assembled media. 'We had talked endlessly in this season about trying to play with the lead and obviously we were in a 2-0 hole right away. I didn't take that lightly, and I didn't blame it all on Jake, but the reality is that if you go back to last year's playoffs, he's lost six of seven games to Edmonton and we gave up two shots, two goals in an elimination game. It was partly to spark our team and wake them up, and partly knowing that status quo had not been working. And that's a pretty big sample size.' The Stars lost Game 5 by a 6-3 score. The next morning, team owner Tom Gaglardi backed his coach in a conversation with Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News. 'He's a top-three, top-five coach in the league,' Gaglardi said. 'You think I want to be going into the coaching market right now, do you see who's getting hired? Pete's a seasoned coach. I'm just one voice in the discussion, but I don't see (firing) Pete being on anyone's agenda.' It appears the players were also important voices in the discussion. By the time their exit meetings were complete last weekend, word was trickling out that DeBoer's position was far from secure. At this point, it looks like DeBoer, 56, will have to wait awhile for his next opportunity. On Thursday, the Boston Bruins became the last team to fill their opening when they announced they'd hired Marco Sturm. Six other NHL teams have also hired new head coaches since the end of the 2024-25 regular season: The NHL is often labelled as a copycat league, and the same coaches often resurface on new teams. This list is a mix of established names and new faces. Quenneville, 66, ranks fifth all-time in games coached and second in wins, behind only Scotty Bowman. He's back in the NHL with Anaheim after resigning from the Florida Panthers in the fall of 2021 due to his part in the Chicago Blackhawks' sexual misconduct incident in 2011, when he was that team's coach. 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New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Pete DeBoer earned his firing, but the Stars' problems run deeper
It was the rashness of the decision, yanking goaltender Jake Oettinger after just two shots, neither of which was all that stoppable. It was the humiliating manner in which he made the decision, emphatically and animatedly calling Oettinger back to the bench for a globally televised walk of shame after a timeout. And it was the callousness with which he threw Oettinger under the bus in his very first response following the game, all but saying Oettinger was incapable of beating the Edmonton Oilers, and that there was 'a pretty big sample size' worth of proof. Advertisement Yes, Pete DeBoer got himself fired as Dallas Stars head coach with the way he treated Oettinger in their last game of the season, a 6-3 loss to Edmonton in Game 5 of the Western Conference final. Oh, sure, everyone said the right things two days later on locker clean-out day, but you have to think the exit interviews that day were a tad more blunt and a lot more truthful. 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Do Peter Laviolette or John Tortorella, as abrasive and nomadic as DeBoer, hold any appeal? And most importantly, will any of them fare any better than DeBoer, one of the most successful coaches of the modern era? Or is this simply a conference-final level team, a group that performs better on paper than it does in the biggest moments? Advertisement This is now the big question facing Nill, bigger than Benn or Duchene: Who are these Dallas Stars, and what is their ceiling? 'We've been knocking on the door for a while, and you only get so many opportunities,' Nill told me. 'I've been talking to a few of the young guys here, who came in the last three or four years, and they think this is ordinary stuff, winning like this three years in a row. I tell them not to take this for granted. This is not easy. We've got an opportunity, so let's take advantage of it.' Dallas didn't. Again. Which leads to this kind of existential crisis, this kind of drastic decision. The Stars are a very, very good team. DeBoer is a very, very good coach. Together, they had very, very good results. But Dallas is looking for great. And so DeBoer is looking for work. We'll just have to wait and see who's looking for longer.
NBC Sports
an hour ago
- NBC Sports
Panthers look to even the Stanley Cup Final against the Oilers in Game 2
EDMONTON, Alberta — Trailing the Stanley Cup Final after losing the opener in overtime, the defending champion Florida Panthers look to even things up in Game 2 at the Edmonton Oilers. Winning on the road has not been a problem for them so far, going 8-3 away from home, the third loss coming on Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal following a puck-over-the-glass penalty on Tomas Nosek. The task of going into a packed, loud arena is just another challenge the Panthers are embracing. 'It's that 'us against the world' mindset, but you really feel it especially being down in a series,' winger Matthew Tkachuk said. 'Us against the 20-plus guys you're playing against, the 20,000 that are in the rink, the 20,000 that are outside the rink. It's just us against everybody. That's what makes playing on the road so fun and rewarding when you can get a win.' If they do, it will wrestle home-ice advantage away from the Oilers with play shifting to Sunrise for Games 3 and 4. One of the toughest parts of being on the road is trying to defend Draisaitl and Connor McDavid when they're on the ice together. Coach Kris Knoblauch did that some late in Game 1, and it's difficult for Paul Maurice to counter without the last line change to control matchups. 'When they play together, they're obviously very creative players and they'll make everyone around them better,' Florida defenseman Seth Jones said. 'They like to look for each other, especially when they play together, little give-and-goes, things like that, and then they're dangerous off the rush, too. Whether they're playing together or apart, it's a five-man unit defending.' The Oilers remain without Zach Hyman, out for the remainder of the playoffs after his right wrist got dislocated on a hit during the last round. The Panthers could be close to full strength if A.J. Greer can return, and Maurice said fourth-liner Jonah Gadjovich is good to go after missing part of Game 1.
