The Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers meet again in the Stanley Cup final, a cross-continental showdown of the NHL’s last teams left standing.
The Panthers are aiming to be back-to-back champions, while Oilers captain Connor McDavid is looking to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time in his dominant career. Game 1 is Wednesday night at Edmonton.
Here’s a look at the series by the numbers:
11
This is the 11th rematch in the final in league history and the first since Pittsburgh and Detroit in 2009. Edmonton and the New York Islanders also had one in 1984. Each of those series saw the result flip from the previous year.
The other two rematches since the expansion era began in 1967 were Montreal sweeps of Boston in 1977 and ’78 and St. Louis in ’68 and ’69.
3
The Panthers are in the final for a third consecutive season, matching cross-state rival Tampa Bay’s trio of trips from 2020-22. The Lightning won back to back on their first two runs, then lost their third to Colorado.
Get daily National news
Since Paul Maurice was hired as coach and Florida acquired Matthew Tkachuk in a trade in the summer of 2022, the team has won 10 of 11 playoff series.
51
McDavid and longtime running mate Leon Draisaitl lead all scorers in the playoffs with 26 and 25 points, respectively. This is their seventh playoff run together and the sixth year in a row.
Since their postseason debuts in 2017, McDavid has 143 points and Draisaitl 133, first and second of all players in that time. All that is missing is the Stanley Cup.
2.11
Sergei Bobrovsky has again backstopped the Panthers to the final, going 12-5 with a 2.11 goals-against average and .912 save percentage through three rounds.
Counterpart Stuart Skinner lost his starting job after allowing 11 goals in Games 1 and 2 of the first round and only got it back in the second when Calvin Pickard was injured. Since returning to the net, Skinner is 6-2 with a 1.73 GAA and a .931 save percentage.
4,092
The 4,092 kilometres between Sunrise, Fla., and Edmonton is — for the second year in a row — the longest distance between finalists in NHL history. It’s a roughly six-hour flight each way for the teams, which will be especially challenging going back to western Canada for Game 5 without an extra travel day after Game 4.
Comments