Cote: Road magic fails Panthers in 4-3 OT loss in Edmonton to open Stanley Cup rematch

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2 days ago

This Stanley Cup Final feels bigger and broader than a championship series. It's more than just that the Florida Panthers could become the NHL's first back-to-back champ over the same opponent since 1977-78.
It is the Repeat vs. Revenge Rematch and all that entails: History, no matter who wins.
Game 1 Wednesday night in Edmonton felt big as a Game 7 (more like a Game 8?), but it was only the start.
The Florida Panthers blew a 3-1 lead and fell 4-3 in overtime in Edmonton, giving up a power-play goal to the Oilers' Leon Draisaitl in the last minute of OT after an awfully timed delay of game penalty on Tomas Nosek.
'He's invaluable,'said McDavid of Draisaitl. 'Clutch.'
Florida had been 29-0 in the playoffs under coach Paul Maurice when leading after two periods ... until this. Edmonton dominated 46-32 on shots on goal. It was 24-8 after the second period.
Sam Bennett, who scored twice for Florida, suggested afterward is team turned too conservative, holding back with a 3-1 lead.
Maurice agreed, to a point.
'At 3-2, not at 3-1. At 3-2 I thought we were a little safe with the puck,' he said. 'There were places we could have controlled the puck a little bit more. I feel we're both better [than last year]. It's a potential spectacular seven games up and down the ice.'
The play was physical, the pace frenetic, a terrific advertisement for hockey, a reminder why we love sports. And just the beginning! If this is how this series is going to be ... yes, please.
Game 2 is Friday back in Edmonton before the series returns to South Florida for Game 3 Monday.
The Panthers by winning again would be only the third pro team South Florida sports history to win back to back, after the Miami Dolphins in 1972-73 and Miami Heat in 2012-13. Don Shula and LeBron James. Fair company. A double-crown by the Cats also would instigate dynasty talk, and at loud volume, after a sensational four-year run that would have declared no sign of ending.
The Edmonton Oilers by winning would chase the ice-monkey off the back of both superstar Connor McDavid and all of Canada. To the starving country that invented hockey, it would deliver a first Cup since 1993. For McDavid, raising Lord Stanley's prize for the first time to cap his 10th season would complete the legacy of a player called McJesus, called an all-time great -- but a king without a crown until he wins one.
Need a bit more spice? Or perhaps half comic-relief, half genuine vitriol? There's the undercurrent of politics stirring animus between the neighbors, with Canadians angered by President Donald Trump's tariffs and his absurd aside saying perhaps Canada should be the 51st U.S. state.
McDavid's is the face at the center of the maelstrom.
'There's a big circus. You can feel like it's larger than it is,' he said on the doorstep of Game 1. 'At the end of the day, it's another series, and we're playing another great team, and you've got to beat them before anything else happens. So they have our complete focus. All of our energy is going into beating the Florida Panthers. There should be nothing else on anyone's mind.'
Yours truly admits to playing maybe a tiny part in the circus with a reprise of my 'McOverrated' nickname for McDavid, based solely on his having never yet won the Cup.
McDavid's boyhood hero, Sidney Crosby, and Canadian legend Wayne Gretzky, whose statue is outside the Edmonton arena, both lost in their first Stanley Cup Final before later winning. Can McDavid? Finally?
'I see, obviously, the parallels that everyone wants to write about,' McDavid said. 'At the end of the day, this is a different story. Different teams, a different group. I'm just excited to have another kick at the can here, that's all. You couldn't ask for a better opportunity than to go against the team that beat us last year.'
As McDavid spoke Tuesday, seated during the NHL's Cup Final media day, a giant poster of the Panthers' Matthew Tkachuk lifting last year's Cup trophy looked over McDavid's shoulder, as if he needed a reminder of what he lacked.
Edmonton entered the Final a slight betting favorite at most sportsbooks, leading Tkachuk to say his team embraced the underdog role even as reigning champions, and calling the Cats 'greedy' to win again (though Tkachuk himself has had a somewhat quiet postseason, evidently not 100 percent healthy).
The hallowed Cup was on the ice before the puck dropped Wednesday. Will Tkachuk, et al, lift it again in two weeks ... or will McDavid for the first time?
We have only just begun.
Teams that win Game 1 in the playoffs win the series 68.1 percent of the time historically, but leaning too heavily on such data is dicey. Just two rounds ago the Panthers trailed Toronto in games 2-0 but got it to a Game 7 and advanced.
Wednesday, Edmonton fans had barely finished singing their Oh Canada anthem a capella (full-throated and lovely) when the lamp lit just 66 seconds into the game on Leon Draisaitl's snap shot in close, after Bobrovsky deflected but could not glove the shot before.
'You come in here and your ears are ringing,' Cats captain Aleksander Barkov had said of an Oilers home crowd, the din backing him up.
The noise wouldn't last. It died mid-first with a 1-1- tie on a Carter Verhaeghe shot that deflected in off Bennett for Bennett's NHL-leading 11th score of this postseason. Edmonton challenged for goaltender interference but lost because Bennett had been tripped into goalie Stuart Skinner.
The lost challenge gifted a power play to Florida -- and the Cats cashed two minutes later for a 2-1 lead on a Brad Marchand wrist shot from a gorgeous cross-ice pass from distance by Nate Schmidt.
Marchand had done really well in the team poker game on the 2,500-mile flight to Edmonton. 'I sort of cleaned up,' he said. He won again finishing that snake from Schmidt's stick.
That Panthers' second goal was the team's 50th on the road this postseason (in 11 games) to break the league record for a single playoffs.
Just after that three penalties called within 24 seconds left Florida on the wrong end of a 4-on-3 power play the Cats survived thanks largely to Bobrovsky, who rose up big as the Oilers led 15-7 in first-period shots on goal.
The frantic pace spilled into the second period as two minutes in Bennett's second goal of the night and Panthers-record 12th of the postseason made it 3-1 and muted the home crowd ... for a minute. Bennett is due a payday from Florida or another team after this season. Wednesday raised his asking price for sure.
But it was 3-2 only 77 seconds later on a Viktor Varvidsson shot that found Bobrvosky screened a bit and letting a past a puck he'd have likely stopped with a full sight-line.
Bobrovsky again was partly screened on the Mattias Ekholm snap shot that tied it 3-3 third into the third period, McDavid assisting for his first point of the night.
Edmonton was dominating as the game lapsed into the 20-minute sudden-death overtime, then finished late in OT when Draisaitl's shot sent arena decibels through the roof.
What an encore to last year's seven-game championship series.
And we've only just begun.