As NHL's ‘old guys' dominate Stanley Cup Final, will it affect how teams are constructed?

New York Times

13 hours ago

EDMONTON — A Stanley Cup Final for the ages is being served up with a distinct touch of gray.
It features the NHL's second-oldest starting goaltender in 36-year-old Sergei Bobrovsky of the Florida Panthers, who has been scored on twice already by 40-year-old forward Corey Perry. The Edmonton Oilers are now riding with a 33-year-old journeyman backup in their crease, Calvin Pickard, and the coaching staff turned to 33-year-old Jeff Skinner when searching for a lineup spark entering Game 4.
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Meanwhile, at age 37, Panthers forward Brad Marchand has put himself in the Conn Smythe Trophy conversation, while helping elevate a line centered by Anton Lundell, who at 23 is Florida's youngest regular skater.
As the NHL's championship series enters Game 5 tied 2-2 on Saturday night, perhaps we can chalk up the Panthers' and Oilers' ability to keep exchanging momentum-swinging haymakers in this series to their tenured rosters.
'I've heard this a million times this year: I think we're the oldest team in the NHL,' said Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm, a 35-year-old appearing in his third Stanley Cup Final.
'Having all of that experience on our side is huge in situations like this, where you've got to go game by game, you've got to go day by day and just make sure that you don't let that flow into each other too much.'
Among the 32 goals scored through the opening four games of this final — the most since the 1981 series between the New York Islanders and Minnesota North Stars — just two came off the stick of a player below the age of 25.
In fact, the average cumulative age attached to each of those goals is 31 years, 83 days — well above the league average from the regular season.
What does that tell us?
Well, the NHL is starting to skew a little older, which can be seen in the average age of players jumping from 27.1 years during the 2017-18 season to 28.3 years in 2024-25. And when the games matter most, some of the NHL's most successful franchises seem to be growing increasingly reliant on the stability offered by a player much closer to the end of his career than the start of it.
The lesson was internalized a long time ago by veteran Panthers coach Paul Maurice, who remembers scratching a 37-year-old Paul Coffey with the Carolina Hurricanes for Game 1 of a series against Boston Bruins in April 1999, only to see the Hockey Hall of Famer rejoin the lineup and play more than 30 minutes in Game 2.
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'The older guys have a perspective that young players don't,' said Maurice. 'Young players can be great, but I think you can almost be assured that you're going to get the very best out of your older players in (the) playoffs.'
That's certainly been the case in a Stanley Cup Final where we've seen Perry score a tying goal with 18 seconds left in Game 2, only to have Marchand reply with the double-overtime winner.
They're among a number of intriguing veterans who are set to become unrestricted free agents on July 1 — a list that also includes Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Matt Duchene and John Tavares, among others — which begs the question: Will the success of the Panthers and Oilers affect the team-building strategies of other rivals?
There was a mixed response among the player agents and team executives contacted on Friday.
One GM indicated that age doesn't tend to be a major factor in decisions except when it comes to a player he already has other reservations about, while a second GM said that he's always valued experience when trying to build a contending team and has only had that idea reinforced by seeing how the in-season additions paid off for Edmonton and Florida.
A third team executive noted that it's important what kind of team is adding the graybeards, noting that the Nashville Predators, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings are among the teams who have seen minimal return from adding veteran free agents in recent years to cores that weren't strong enough to maximize them.
One veteran player agent said he thinks the Stanley Cup Final will influence how other top teams approach roster construction.
'You need some youthful exuberance and speed and all of that, and yet you need to mix that with maturity and calmness,' he said. 'The blend and having clear roles is the key.'
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Ultimately, the unique era preceding this one may have skewed expectations for rebuilding teams.
The Pittsburgh Penguins reached the Stanley Cup Final with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin on entry-level contracts immediately before the Blackhawks accomplished the same feat with Kane and Toews driving the team.
Stepping back, those situations look more like outliers than the rule — with the majority of franchise-level players reaching age 25 before their team wins a Cup. All of Florida's top players were north of that age when they captured last year's championship, while Connor McDavid (28) and Leon Draisaitl (29) are in a similar window while trying to wrestle this one away from them.
If the Oilers manage to win it, the 40-year-old Perry will have played an important role, too.
He spoke up during the first intermission on Thursday night with his team trailing 3-0 and Edmonton managed to pull off an epic comeback afterward. Perry did something similar while playing for the Montreal Canadiens in 2021, when they recovered from a 3-1 series deficit against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Round 1 before going on a run to the Cup Final.
'It wasn't wisdom,' said Perry, when asked about his speech. 'It was just honesty.'
'I mean he's been in the league for over 20 years so he's been through everything,' added teammate Jake Walman. 'Nothing can faze him and he's just kind of rubbing that off on us.'
At the risk of ignoring some of the other contributors to an unforgettable Game 4 that included a three-goal comeback, multiple lead changes, a last-minute tying goal and an overtime finish, the two youngest scorers in this series both had big moments.
Lundell struck in the final minute of the first period to make it 3-0 for Florida before Vasily Podkolzin, a fellow 23-year-old, tied it up for Edmonton at 15:05 of the second period. Podkolzin also sent the pass to Draisaitl on the play where he won the game in overtime.
'You know what? We're like an old team,' he said. 'We have so many old guys, we are pretty calm usually. I am calm with them.'
(Top photos of Brad Marchand and Corey Perry: Perry Nelson / Imagn Images and Steph Chambers / Getty Images)