Originally posted on Daily Faceoff
It won’t be long before the six-day layoff mercifully ends and the puck drops on Game 1 of the 2023-24 Stanley Cup Final. The Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers represent a doozie of a matchup. They’re both loaded with megawatt stars in the midst of tremendous postseason runs. They’re both starving for a championship, the Panthers never having won a Cup and the Oilers in a 34-year drought. And both clubs ooze personality, loaded with interesting characters. Corey Perry, Evander Kane, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Paul Maurice and more, in one series? That’ll do.
For a breakdown of the X’s and O’s and series prediction, check out Anthony Trudeau’s great preview here. But today, we dive more into the narrative elements of the Final. What are the key storylines that will decide this series? Consider these five, in random order.
Write Skinner off, and he immediately turns his game around. Declare him ‘The Guy’ in Edmonton’s net, and he immediately implodes. It has become virtually impossible to predict Skinner’s play from game to game. He was bad enough to lose the net during Round 2 against the Vancouver Canucks. But he’s unquestionably on a heater since getting the net back late in that series. Skinner is 6-2-0 with a .919 save percentage over his past eight games. He can look like a star when he’s confident. But the Panthers will test that confidence like no other opponent. They average 33.2 shots per game, second-best among the 16 teams competing this postseason, and no team generates more scoring chances per 60 at 5-on-5. The Panthers know they can rely on Sergei Bobrovsky to be above average more often than not. It’s a dart throw with Skinner. On the bright side: his hot streaks tend to last for long periods of time. Can he channel 1990 Bill Ranford in the Final?
Zoom out to assess the current era of NHL hockey, and we can safely say the Edmonton Oilers’ power play in the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl era is the best the sport has ever seen. It’s clicking at 37.3 percent, the fourth-highest mark in NHL history for a team playing more than 10 games in a postseason. The highest mark ever belongs to…the Oilers last postseason.
The Oilers, in theory, are equipped with a shimmering piece of Kryptonite to wave at the otherwise invincible Florida Panthers. They happen to be the NHL’s least disciplined team, having finished first in penalty minutes this season, which was a symptom of also being the most physical team, leading the league in hits. The Panthers, armed with a brigade of agitators including Tkachuk, Bennett, Ryan Lomberg and Nick Cousins, have kept their bad behavior in check this postseason, ranking just eighth among 16 teams in penalties taken per 60 minutes. They’ve also killed off an impressive 88.2 percent of them, trailing only the Oilers’ league-best 93.9 percent. But if Florida reverts to being principal’s office mainstays and can’t avoid the sin bin, the series will be played where Edmonton wants it played.
The Panthers are the meanest, hardest-hitting group in hockey. They just outmuscled three teams that had plenty of their own grit in the Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins and New York Rangers. And they’ll be putting as many licks as they can on Edmonton’s stars. Of the Oilers’ skill group, Kane has the ideal tools to counter the likes of Bennett. Kane is big, fast, physical and good at inciting opponents’ rage after the whistle. But he also left Game 6 against Dallas with an undisclosed injury and has spoken openly about playing through a sports hernia. If Kane is out or isn’t 100 percent, the Oilers won’t have the proper counter punch in their forward core. Legendary agitator Perry won’t be enough on his own.
The bench boss matchup of Paul Maurice vs. Kris Knoblauch is believed to feature the biggest experience gap between coaches in Stanley Cup Final history. Maurice’s career playoff win total (66) is almost the same as Knoblauch’s career regular season games coached total (69). Maurice is coaching in his third Stanley Cup Final and his second in a row, armed with the deeper team and last change in up to four of seven games. But is experience overrated? Maurice has by far the most career games coached of anyone without a Stanley Cup ring. Knoblauch, who has remade the Oilers’ defensive identity since taking over for Jay Woodcroft, is the anti-Maurice in many ways, never seeming too high or low. Does Knoblauch’s lack of baggage take the pressure off? Deciding who has the coaching edge here is a matter of perception.
This should be good. The line of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid and Zach Hyman has wrecked its competition this postseason. In 5-on-5 play, they’ve outscored opponents 11-4 and they hold a 53.92 percent share of scoring chances. But reigning Selke Trophy winger Aleksander Barkov and fellow elite defensive forward Sam Reinhart have gobbled up elite forwards for the past three rounds. Their 6-5 goal margin may seem pedestrian – but then you see they’ve controlled 61.83 of the scoring chances. Then factor in that their most frequently faced players were the Nikita Kucherov line, the David Pastrnak line and the Mika Zibanejad line. They’re tilting the play against world-class opponents.
Yet none of those opponents is McDavid. That’s what makes this matchup so fun. Neither side has faced a challenge this big so far in the playoffs.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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Originally posted on Daily Faceoff
Published: 5 months ago
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