The Edmonton Oilers are back in the Stanley Cup Final and are ready to take sweet revenge on the Florida Panthers. It’s not often that you get a chance at vengeance as poetic as this.
What can a die hard Oilers fan say to a die hard Florida fan when they say “this year will be exactly the same as last year” though? Please note, when used in reference to a Florida Panthers fan, the term die hard means “was once kidnapped from the family swamp and strapped to a dusty seat in Amerant Bank Arena for an internationally broadcasted game.”
Well today I’ll take the Matthew McConaughey approach and say that the Oilers don’t need to be perfect, so long as they’re better than they were last year. So long as they have a better chance at winning than they did last year, Oilers fans can realistically hope for a different outcome than last year.
Today I won’t look so much at the 2025 Oilers versus the 2025 Panthers as the 2025 Oilers versus the 2024 Oilers. Could this year’s edition of the Oilers beat last year’s? Here are some clumsily worded arguments for your consideration.
Oilers have more defensive stability
There are a few points to look at under this heading. The first to me is the addition of Jake Walman. This is a great guy to watch in isolation because he is calm, collected, confident, and consistent, the four c’s of a good defenceman. He is exactly as offensive as the Oilers need right now, he’s the league leader in plus-minus these playoffs. He makes smart first passes and can hit the griddy on skates, can you do the same?
The second is Darnell Nurse’s turn around. Last year you were yelling at Nurse through your TV twice a game, but this year you’ve barely even raised your voice at him. His on-ice GA/60 is down a full goal from last year. In fact, there hasn’t been much cause to yell at the TV at all this year, and that’s precisely my point.
Unfortunately, Nurse’s better defensive play has come at the expense of Evan Bouchard’s worse defensive play. Bouchard’s on-ice GA/60 has gone up by about a goal since last playoffs, but frankly, it is more useful for Nurse to be strong defensively than Bouchard, whose forte lies in offensive prowess.
Beyond Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard, Brett Kulak, Troy Stecher, and John Klingberg have all played noticeably impressive, sound hockey. This is partially due to the fact that Edmonton pretty much had their way with Dallas and we can’t really expect the same in the Florida series but what we’ve seen from them so far has been extremely impressive.
I am sad to see Stecher out of the lineup now that Mattias Ekholm is back but on the other hand, he is a calming defensive figure, and he’s made his presence felt immediately with that great block which sent Connor McDavid on a breakaway. When you play the game right you get rewarded!
More scoring depth
The most tangible difference that the Oilers hold over last year’s team is scoring depth. Last year, at the end of the playoffs, 11 players had four goals or more, this year 17 players have at least four goals already.
Last year the Oilers took 25.87 shots/60, this year they are taking 28.59. Last year the Oilers were firing off 2.34 xGF/60, this year they are doing 2.99. This translates to 0.0905 xGF/shot last year and 0.1045 this year. If you skipped those boring numbers what this means is that the Oilers are taking more shots this year and on average each shot is of a higher quality than last year.
It isn’t just volume either, the Oilers are getting important, timely, consistent scoring from up and down the lineup. In Games 4 and 5 versus Dallas, Edmonton had four and six unique scorers respectively.
In essentially every way this Oilers team is more well rounded than last year.
An increase in desire and drive
This sounds like a pretty intangible factor, and it most certainly is, but it’s also what will truly decide who wins the Stanley Cup this year. Everyone knows that stats only go so far in hockey, and your own stats aren’t all that useful when you play a new team. What matters is who brings the puck out of the corner, which team can place a man in front of the net for longer, who can play through more pain. These are the factors that produce the stats I have been blabbering about for seven paragraphs.
There were times when the Oilers were dominating the Stars 5v5 and what I noticed most about those times was how much more the Oilers wanted the puck, beating the stars to loose pucks, picking pockets and forcing turnovers.
This is a team that looks like they got so ridiculously close to winning last year that they could read the name of the equipment manager of all 56 teams to have won since the Toronto Maple Leafs, and they simply will not get that close again without winning. Most of us grew up vividly visualizing ourselves lifting the Stanley Cup far over our head but very few of us have ever had the chance to be that close to actually doing it.
One can only imagine the heartache that sets in after getting so close to that childhood dream only to have it snatched away. One can only imagine what that feels like to a guy like McDavid, who is stoic during interviews but whose emotions could not be more clear after a win or in the midst of a tailspin. I have to believe that the biggest advantage the Oilers hold over the Cats is the innate, subconscious, need to lift the Stanley Cup for the first time, a need that most of the Panthers lost last year.
stats from NHL.com, and naturalstatrick.com
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
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