Are the Panthers in the Oilers' heads? After ugly Game 3, Edmonton knows it must play its own style

New York Times

a day ago

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Playing the Florida Panthers can, at times, be like mental warfare. They have mastered the art of walking right up to the line and then not crossing it right when their opponent's head is ready to explode.
They'll provoke you into a cross-check, slash or punch — sometimes, all of the above — then skate away with a satisfied grin.
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Just look at the way Sam Bennett let Trent Frederic punch him in the back of the head, cross-check him twice — the final so fierce that Frederic's stick broke across Bennett's left arm — then grab him by his jersey in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Bennett refused to engage before a line brawl was incited.
'Sometimes you've got to take a punch,' Bennett said Wednesday.
In wrestling terms, this is a team that plays the heel perfectly. They admit a big part of their aggressive, aggravating game plan is pushing you to the brink of boiling over.
Opponents know it's coming. When you're facing a team that has Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand and Aaron Ekblad, plus hard-nosed energy guys such as Jonah Gadjovich and A.J. Greer, you know you're going to have to deal with trash talking, big hits, top players being checked hard, sneaky extracurriculars and little room to operate. But knowing it's coming doesn't mean being able to counter it.
And when an opponent's frustration sets in, as it did for the Edmonton Oilers in Monday's 6-1 Panthers pounding, Florida wins in more ways than just the scoreboard.
'That's part of their DNA,' Oilers star Leon Draisaitl said. 'That's what they do. I think there's spurts in the series when we've handled it really well. (Monday) night, the game's over with 11 minutes left and all hell breaks loose. It's a UFC fight. I think overall, we can be a little more disciplined and stay away from that.'
Everything stemmed from Trent Frederic breaking his stick with cross-checks on Sam Bennett 😳 pic.twitter.com/DDuNQe2M3g
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) June 10, 2025
Indeed, in the third period of Game 3, the Oilers looked like a bunch of lumberjacks, two-handing Panthers players in the back of the legs shift after shift. Sure, they knew the game was out of hand by that point, and it's common in that situation to, as Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch so eloquently said, 'make investments for the next game.'
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But this felt different, even if the Oilers denied losing their scruples.
'It's an emotional time,' Draisaitl said. 'It's two teams that want to win — two teams doing it their own way — but I don't think anybody is going crazy here. They're good at what they do, but (Monday) night was the first night where it got out of hand a little bit. The game's over, it's 5-1 and it's not a big deal. We have guys that are intense. They like getting in those situations just as much as they do.'
Even before the game got out of hand, though, the Oilers took four first-period penalties, including cross-checking and high-sticking minors to Evander Kane. Kane would later slash a fallen Carter Verhaeghe in the face right after he was two-handed by Evan Bouchard.
Evander Kane tried to sneak this one in but got caught in the process#LetsGoOilers | #TimeToHunt pic.twitter.com/p4anCEgoqQ
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) June 10, 2025
Earlier in the game, Bouchard cross-checked Anton Lundell, who fell quickly to the ice before being punched again by Jake Walman.
The Oilers accused the Panthers during the game of diving (Lundell and Sergei Bobrovsky) and turtling (Tkachuk wanting no part of fighting Kane).
'They seem to get away with it more than we do,' Kane said afterward. 'It's tough to find the line. They're doing just as much stuff as we are.'
The Panthers do get away with plenty. As Marchand said, they know that the refs 'can't call everything all the time.' There was one shift in the first period on Monday where Bennett looked like he committed two penalties on Draisaitl that went uncalled.
But what's so hard for opponents is that the Panthers are unrelenting with their in-your-face style — and also at turning the other cheek. One of their biggest improvements over the past couple of years under Paul Maurice has been after-whistle discipline.
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'It used to be a lot worse,' Verhaeghe said. 'We'd engage a lot more. But I think over the years, we realized that it doesn't really help anything and that you play hard between the whistles, but the after-whistle stuff only hurts us.
'We do a good job drawing penalties. We'll take that. But I think two or three years ago when we made it to the Final (against the Vegas Golden Knights), we were a pretty undisciplined team. After the whistle, we'd be involved in scrums and everything like that. And then we realized that it didn't really help our game and nothing good would happen from it.'
Added Greer, 'We have to play in between whistles, especially with a team that has such a good power play. We try to frustrate them with how little time they have with the puck. So if a guy's coming up the ice, if our D man has a good gap on him, he has to chip in, and then he gets held up — he has nothing to do.
'All he's doing is chasing the puck. He gets frustrated, and that translates to stuff after the whistle. For us, that's how we're trying to frustrate them, is by playing a tight defensive game and not letting them have any open ice or any chances to get to that net. That's how we have to play. That's how we have to frustrate them, and then that'll translate to us getting power plays, right? That's how we view it, and that's how our game plan is.'
Of course, the Panthers can be sneaky, too, like when Greer removed Walman's glove and casually tossed it onto Florida's bench. That led to Walman squirting a water bottle between the benches, a move that resulted in one of Walman's two $5,000 fines stemming from Game 3.
Walman was spraying water at the Panthers bench 👀 pic.twitter.com/gzuvCi9WJM
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) June 10, 2025
'We have plenty of water on our bench,' Greer said, sarcastically. 'We've got great trainers, great training staff. We've got Gatorade. We've got water, BodyArmor. We've got some nice stuff over there.'
Greer's other fine was for repeatedly punching Tkachuk in the face as John Klingberg held Tkachuk's head.
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Tkachuk is a common factor in a lot of this. The hate between him and Kane, in particular, is real.
As Kane said before the series, 'We know what he's about. There's never a lot of backup to that talk.'
Or as Kane said after Game 1, 'What's it like (playing Tkachuk)? It's like any player. He just talks a little more.'
Jake Walman just gave a couple rights to Matthew Tkachuk 😳👊 pic.twitter.com/gSv9SgT33Z
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) June 10, 2025
But even Tkachuk has toned down the after-whistle shenanigans.
His first year in Florida, Tkachuk averaged 1.55 penalty minutes per game (123 in 79 games). Last season, it was down to 1.1 (88 in 80 games). This past regular season, 1.03.
'You take a look at Matthew Tkachuk's penalties, the line graph of his penalties, and there's a significant drop after his first six months here, with the exception of whenever he and (brother) Brady play against each other,' Maurice quipped. 'Then there's this one game spike.'
Maurice also agreed that it's the Panthers' style between the whistles that frustrates opponents. In his mind, absorbing the punches and stick infractions and skating away is part of paying the price in the playoffs.
As Tkachuk said after Game 3, the Panthers talked during the third period about, 'If you have to take a punch, take a punch. If you have to take a cross-check, take a cross-check. Spear, slash in the face, whatever the case is, you've got to take it.'
When Bouchard and Kane went after Verhaeghe, he lived those words.
'It's just smart,' Verhaeghe said. 'Let them go to the box all night.'
And that's what the Oilers will have to avoid the rest of the series. After Game 3, they've got to know that the Panthers are trying to sucker them into the nonsense.
'We know what they are,' defenseman Mattias Ekholm said. 'We got experience of playing them last year, and I think it's more on us as players. That's their brand. That's what they do. That's what they do really well. But at the same time, we've won four games against them in these Finals in the last two years. And I think if you look at those games, we're a very focused group. We play our game. We don't let that even creep in a little bit. Maybe we lost that a little bit (Monday) night, but we know what to do.'
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Same with the Panthers.
'We have a really focused group this year,' Bennett said. 'Our eyes are on one thing and one thing only, and guys are going to stick up for each other. Guys are going to stand up for each other. But we have one goal in mind, and all the other stuff is just distracting and just to try to get you off your game. We have one goal in mind, and that's all that we're really worried about.'
(Photo of Jonah Gadjovich, Trent Frederic and Sam Bennett: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)