The Beauty of this Oilers-Panthers Stanley Cup Rematch is the Honesty
Just let me cook for a second.
EDMONTON — Happy Stanley Cup Final SZN, hockey fans.
I’m sitting in a precious Edmontonian coffee shop called Box Car the morning after Game 1, and I’m eating a PB&J for breakfast as I realize I’m not totally sure what hour, day, or decade it is right now.
I was hoping some simple carbohydrates would help me capture the last remaining brain cell rattling around somewhere in my head, but Little Miss Brain Cell is off on PTO today. I just hope she has fun. She’d been working overtime trying to process the implications of the Oilers’ 4-3, Game 1 overtime win for hours before she left me to fend for myself.
This haze, of course, is my favorite feeling in the world. It’s proof that I attended one of the best Stanley Cup Final games ever last night. It’s proof that I care so much about something — about this game we watch together — that I can barely sleep.
We want the Stanley Cup Final to be so good that it’s all-consuming, right?
Anyway, according to multiple sources, today is Thursday, June 5, 2025. To me, though, putzing around Edmonton with whimsy in my heart and an Oura Ring Readiness Score I’m too scared to check, it feels a little bit like 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, or 1990.
Am I really going there? Am I really that person declaring a Cup winner after a team wins literally one home game that almost went to two overtimes?
Maybe I am.
Leon Draisaitl is healthy, after all, and in Game 1 he tied the NHL record for overtime goals in a playoff year (3). Draisaitl’s two-goal performance on the evening really encapsulated the beauty — and the simplicity — of this rematch. We have reliable variables to factor in, and every variable counts when it’s this close. So, when it comes to Draisaitl? Yeah, him simply scoring a few goals could be the difference between winning and losing the entire series.
The Oilers’ top goal-scorer was injured throughout his 2024 playoff run, and he scored zero goals in last season’s Stanley Cup Final. He is healthy this time around, and he scored two goals in Game 1 of this season’s Stanley Cup Final.
Maybe — just maybe — it will be this simple.
I’ve been reinventing the wheel, cloning the rat, and throwing my back out at the Pink Pony Club as I search for some magical and fresh take to describe these teams, their Game 1, and the overarching implications of this rematch. If you missed my postgame takeaways, you can start there, but maybe the beauty of this particular Cup Final is that we’re all kind of saying the same thing for a reason.
Leave it to Panthers head coach Paul Maurice to get to the heart of that thing.
"There's not any casualness, and there's no BS in either team's game,” he told us after Game 1. “It was honest, it was hard, it was fast, and it was tight. It was an overtime game."
Neither of these teams make an excuse because neither of these teams need an excuse. The Oilers outshot the Panthers when it mattered most in Game 1, but the Panthers kept lurking and Bobrovsky kept Bobrovskying for the most part. The teams exchanged dominant periods, and at certain points either team winning felt almost certain.
We got Draisaitl scoring 66 seconds in for the quickest Stanley Cup Final goal in half a century. We got Sam Bennett scoring shortly after to tie it up, forcing a failed coaches challenge that resulted in a Panthers power play and a Brad Marchand goal for the lead in a matter of minutes.
Then we saw the Oilers break the Panthers’ 31-game streak of winning a playoff game while holding the lead after the first period.
Maurice already predicted this will be a spectacular seven-gamer. I get the feeling this’ll be a back-and-forth series where I’m convinced whoever wins the game that night is winning the whole thing. Call me a fool, but I’m having the time of my life so far.
Maybe, as my friend John Forslund says best, we should actually just sit back and enjoy this one. Maybe that’s why my brain cell went on strike today. NO MORE TAKES, BOSS.