SUNRISE, Fla. – The Florida Panthers won their first Stanley Cup in franchise history with a 2-1 Game 7 victory over the Edmonton Oilers Monday night in a thrilling conclusion to a series playoff classic.
Winger Sam Reinhart’s second-period goal proved to be the game-winner, while goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky made 23 saves to close out the series and help his team avoid playoff infamy.
The Panthers’ victory avoided one of the most epic collapses in sports history. Florida had built a 3-0 series lead, but the Oilers fought back with three straight victories, marking only the third time in NHL history that a team had forced a Game 7 after lost the first three games of a Stanley Cup final.
But the legacy of the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs remains intact; they are still the only team to come back from a 3-0 deficit in the final to win the Cup, after the Oilers fell short.
Instead, Florida became only the third team in the last 40 years to win the Stanley Cup after losing in the Finals in the previous playoffs, with the Panthers falling in five games to the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023.
Florida captain Aleksander Barkov received the Cup from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and after skating with it, Barkov presented it to Bobrovsky.
“He deserves it. He’s been here for a long time and he’s been our best player for a long time,” Barkov said of Bobrovsky. “He played amazing.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice – who joined the franchise two seasons ago after leaving his job as coach of the Winnipeg Jets and had been to the Finals twice in two years – won for the first time in a long career.
“I’ve been looking for this for a long time,” Maurice said after presenting the Stanley Cup to his coaching staff. “It has nothing to do with the coach; this group has been special since day one.”
The Oilers were in their first Stanley Cup final since 2006.
It was Edmonton superstar Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl who led their teams the furthest in the playoffs. Neither player scored a point in Game 7, as McDavid went scoreless in the final two games of the series. He finished as the playoffs’ leading scorer with 42 points. Despite the loss, McDavid was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player.
The energy in the building for Game 7 could be felt well before puck drop. A significant number of Oilers fans purchased tickets to the game, cheering on the Edmonton players during warmups and singing loudly “O Canada” under the voice of guest singer Alanis Morissette. Panthers fans responded with their own lively rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The Panthers opened the scoring moments after an early power play ended, following a high stick call on Edmonton’s Warren Foegele. Florida winger Evan Rodrigues fired the puck toward the Edmonton net where he found Carter Verhaeghe alone in front, firing it home for his 11th goal of the playoffs at 4:27 to send the home crowd into a frenzy. frenzy.
“It’s said to be the hardest trophy to win in sports, and you can’t imagine how difficult it is until you’ve done it,” Rodrigues said. “Coming into Game 7, it took some pressure off us, and we did it the hard way. But it was a perfect result.”
Teams that scored first in Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final held an all-time record of 12-5, including eight consecutive victories dating back to 1994.
But Mattias Janmark gave Oilers fans at Sunrise a reason to celebrate just 2:17 later, receiving a pass from defenseman Cody Ceci the length of the ice and converting a breakaway goal for his fourth in the playoffs to tie the score at 1-1.
The Panthers took the lead in the second period in a “hockey is a game of inches” sequence.
Foegele shot the puck with a crowd in front of Bobrovsky. The ball deflected off the goalie’s arm and fell to the ice next to him, where defenseman Dmitry Kulikov cleared it toward the corner as he fell.
Kulikov’s play ended with a secondary pass on Reinhart’s goal at 15:11, a wrist shot through a screen that beat goaltender Stuart Skinner. It was Reinhart’s 10th goal of the playoffs and first since Game 3.
Florida took the lead in the third period for the 10th time, after going 9-0 in that situation in the playoffs. In the last two playoff series, they were 18-0 while leading after two.
In Stanley Cup Final history, teams were 13-1 when leading after two periods in a Game 7. The only team to rally? These 1942 Maple Leafs, who won the Cup after leading 1-0 against the Detroit Red Wings.
The Oilers pushed in the third period but were unable to equalize, despite some chaotic moments in front of Bobrovsky.
Plastic rats, gloves and sticks littered the ice as the Panthers celebrated.
“It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it, everything was worth it,” Bobrovsky said. “It was all this moment I wanted to enjoy.”
McDavid said it was “make or break” after last season. It was not until the last possible game of the season that his quest for the championship ended and his country’s Stanley Cup drought continued. No Canadian team has won the Cup since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993.
“We lost to a very deserving team,” Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch said.
