On Monday night, the hockey world gets to watch the greatest thing an NHL season can deliver: a Game 7 winner take all in the Stanley Cup Finals.
When it comes to sports championships, we tend to hear that a team did or didn’t deserve to win the cup. Undoubtedly, we will hear the arguments for each of the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers.
So, in preparation for Game 7, which team really deserves it more?
Why the Oilers deserve it
The fans deserve it
34 years and one month. Or 409 months. Or 12,451 days. That is how long Oilers fans will have waited to see their team win the Stanley Cup again come Monday.
In the 33 seasons since (stupid lockout), the Oilers have made the playoffs just 15 times (14 if you don’t include the play-in qualifiers in the pandemic bubble). That includes 10 straight years without a playoff appearance, and then just when it looked like things were turning around, another two years in the basement followed.
Now, people will point out to the fact that the Oilers have already won five cups before this, compared to a Florida team that hasn’t ever won it.
But how many of the current Oilers fans saw those cups? If you are under the age 40, you either weren’t even alive or were barely conscious enough to have been able to even know they won the cup, let alone be able to celebrate it.
To put things in perspective, there are grown adults who weren’t alive when the Oilers last made the finals, and therefore have only seen the team make the playoffs six times, or just a third of their life.
For a fanbase as diehard as the Oilers, that is a tough pill to swallow. This is a fanbase that has stuck with the team through thick and thin, from having to come together with last minute season ticket drives and local investors to keep the team from being relocated, to the “Decade of Darkness” that followed a Cinderella run to the Final that came up just short in another Game 7.
People will also mention that the Oilers have been “gifted” multiple high picks during that decade, including four first overall picks, which they seem to think means that it wasn’t so bad.
Of course, these same people don’t seem to understand that in order to get those picks, the team has to be, y’know, bad.
No one can question the loyalty (or “loilty”) of the Oilers faithful, and the fans alone deserve to see their team win the cup.
McDavid deserves it
He’s the best player in the world by far. Hell, Jonathan Marchessault called him the most dominant player to have ever played the game.
The only argument that can be brought up when it comes to tarnishing Connor McDavid is the fact that he hasn’t won a cup yet.
It is widely acknowledged that the Stanley Cup is probably the hardest trophy to win in sports, and that one player can’t win it all on their own. But at the end of the day, in a sport like hockey it is the team accomplishments, not the individual ones, that tends to carry the water (it is why everyone is in full agreement Patrick Maroon is a sure fire, first ballot hall of famer, right?)
For a guy who has broken a Wayne Gretzky’s playoff record this year and who willed his team to coming back in this series, there is no one who deserves the cup more than him to get that monkey off his back.
Nugent-Hopkins deserves it
If there is any Oiler who can sympathize with Oilers fans, it is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. He is the longest tenured Oiler, and was there for the peak (bottom?) of the dark days.
Nuge has also had to deal with his detractors, as there were points where people questioned whether he was a bust of a first overall pick.
Oilers fans always loved the guy, however, as they saw someone with offensive skill but who was laden with the pressure to be the defensive conscious from a young age. “Keep Nuge Forever” was a testament to how beloved he is in the city, and I think fans may be even more excited to see him raise the cup than they would be for McDavid.
You can also put Sam Gagner deserving it as well, but the fact he won’t have played a game in the playoffs kind of makes it more bittersweet than romantic, to be honest.
The movie script writes itself
This season had everything for the Oilers, and to say it has been a rollercoaster of emotion is an understatement.
The team entered the season with sky-high, “cup or bust” expectation, only to stumble out of the gate to the point whether they were tied for dead last in the league. The coach was fired and replaced by a rookie NHL coach.
The team then turned things around, posting eight- and 16-game winning streaks and finished second in the division with home ice.
After a pretty easy first round win against the Los Angeles Kings for the third year in a row, things started to look a little dicey.
After being up 4–1 in Game 1 against the Vancouver Canucks, the Oilers ended up letting in four straight and losing the game. The teams would then trade victories, with the Oilers eventually benching goalie Stuart Skinner for backup Calvin Pickard in Games 4 and 5. The Canucks entered Game 6 with the opportunity to put the Oilers away, and most of the hockey world seemed to think it a foregone conclusion.
Skinner got his revenge though, stopping 29 of 32 shots in the last two games to lead the Oilers to their second Western Conference Final in three years.
The Oilers managed to win Game 1 of that series, but then subsequently dropped the next two, with questions regarding Stuart Skinner’s play rearing their head once again, and again the sentiment was very much that Dallas would be the victor.
The Oilers ended up winning the next three games instead, however, resulting in their first Stanley Cup Final appearance in 18 years. It was topped off by an outstanding performance by Skinner, who stopped 34 of 35 shots to cover up for the fact that his team only managed 10 shots the entire game.
But, things did not go as planned in the Final. The Oilers were shut out 3–0 in Game 1, then walloped 4–1 in Game 2. A return home seemed to provide a bit of a spark, but ultimately the Oilers came up short by a score of 4–3, and again defensive gaffes and shaky goaltending became the topic du jour. Up 3–0 meant that the Panthers had this thing all locked up.
However, just like the previous two series, the Oilers proved McDavid’s advice to the Oilers fans to keep cheering because it’s not over until it’s over to be prophetic.
The Oilers came out gangbusters in Game 4, scoring two goals in the first eight minutes to absolutely blow the lid off of Rogers Place. Stuart Skinner than made a Roloson-esque save to keep the game 2–1, and his team rewarded him and the fans with another six goals en route to a massive 8–1 game.
Still, being down 3–1 going into enemy territory where you know the Panthers were going to be chomping at the bit to win at home and get revenge for the embarrassment of Game 4 means it isn’t going to be easy.
But McDavid posted his second straight four-point game, the first player in NHL history to have back-to-back four-point games in a Stanley Cup Final, and the Oilers won, dragging Florida back to Alberta.
And with all the momentum and the loudest NHL building on their side, the Oilers again took it to the Panthers, winning 5–1 to bring them to within one game of, if not the, greatest comebacks in sports history.
You’re not gonna look at that and tell me that there isn’t a movie in there? The only issue I can see is whether we can de-age Tom Selleck enough for him and his moustache to play Skinner and his moustache.
Why the Panthers deserve to win
You always remember your first
The Panthers have never won a cup in their 30 years of existence. The Oilers had five in their first 11 seasons.
So while we can point to a large majority of Oilers fans who haven’t seen their team raise a cup, there is literally not a single Panthers fan who has.
And it’s not like this has been a team that’s been having lots of success even without a cup, like the San Jose Sharks or Nashville Predators. The Panthers have made the playoffs just 10 times in their 30 years (although, three of those 10 times they have made it to the Finals, a percentage only bested by Montreal, Detroit, Edmonton, Tampa Bay, Vegas, and the now defunct St. Louis Eagles).
In that time, the Panthers had their own 10-year playoff drought as well, so it hasn’t been exactly a cakewalk for their fans either.
Sure, they did make the Final last year, but losing back-to-back might be even worse than losing and then having a 10-year drought (which they kind of also did as well, seeing as they lost in the first round the year after their first appearance, missed the next two years, lost in the first round again and then had 10 years of nothing).
So yeah, if we want to talk about long term suffering, the Oilers don’t quite have the monopoly on that in this series.
The team deserves to win
We talk about McDavid being the best player in the world, but this Panthers team is one of the best teams in the league.
They’re fourth in wins since 2019–20 and have won the most playoff games since 2021. In fact, the only two teams without a cup in the top five in playoff wins in the past three seasons are the Panthers and the Oilers.
While the Oilers have had their ups and downs these playoffs, the Panthers have been pretty well oiled (no pun intended), only falling behind in a series twice so far when they lost Game 1 of Round 2 to the Boston Bruins and Game 3 of Round 3 to the New York Rangers.
Despite how the series has unfolded, the Panthers did still go up 3–0 in this series, which isn’t nothing. They also pulled off a 3–0 comeback last year, when they stunned the best ever team in NHL history Bruins in the first round. You have to think that experience comes into play here.
Sure, you can definitely argue that a team that blows a 3–0 lead can’t be considered one that deserves to eventually win it, but you just have to win four, it doesn’t matter how you do it.
And at the end of the day, does any player really deserve to lose the finals two years in a row? If you’re an Oilers fan (and maybe even a Calgary Flames one?) you would say Matthew Tkachuk does, so maybe just think about the rest of the team (except maybe not Sam Bennett).
Luongo deserves it
Roberto Luongo is one of the best goalies of all time, and one of the most beloved, even despite being apart of the 2011 Vancouver Canucks, which was the closest he has ever come to winning a cup.
He is second all time in games played, fourth in wins, has the second most wins in a season, ninth in shutouts, ninth in save percentage (while playing more than double the amount of games of seven of the goalies ahead of him), second in all time saves, and is third and fourth for most saves in a season.
He also has two Olympic Gold Medals, two World Championship Gold Medals, a World Cup and a Jennings Trophy. The only thing missing from his resume is a Stanley Cup (and a Vezina).
While no longer playing, he is a Special Advisor to the GM for the Panthers, and no one can fault his loyalty to the team, having come back to finish his career off there.
So seeing him be able to raise the cup, even if it is in a suit rather than in a jersey, would still be something nice to see.
Bobrovsky deserves it
This may be a controversial one, especially since Sergei Bobrovsky’s stats in the last three games have not been pretty.
But he is the biggest reason Florida was up 3–0, and at that point it is only fair for him to expect his team to pitch in.
Again, you can point to the fact that he has let in 12 goals in the last three games as a major reason for the losses, but his team has only scored five goals in that span, including just one goal in Game 4 and one goal in Game 6. If his team could muster any run support for him, the Panthers are celebrating with the cup right now instead of preparing for Game 7.
Bobrovsky might be the most maligned two-time Vezina winning goalie of all time, although his contract doesn’t help.
He is tied for the NHL all-time winning streak at 14 games, second among active goalies in career wins, fourth in shutouts (if you factor in Carey Price is not really active anymore), eighth in save percentage and goals against average. He tied for second among active goalies with seven 30-win seasons, including one 40-win season.
That is a Hall of Fame resume, and a cup would solidify his legacy as one of the best of all time.
He was considered the front runner for the Conn Smythe after Game 3, and one has to wonder if he shows up again in Game 7 if the voters get swayed back despite McDavid’s otherworldly campaign.
Overall verdict
Coming into this series, I think most people had it as a coin flip. So it is fitting that it comes down to a winner take all matchup. Both teams have a good case in terms of the “story” behind them winning the cup.
In terms of the best story, the Oilers coming back from 3–0 is hands down the better one, and would be one of the best in league history. But does that necessarily mean they deserve to win it more?
Yes. Yes they do.
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