Heartbreak for Oilers as Florida Panthers win franchise’s 1st Stanley Cup

Connor McDavid may have put together one of the most memorable performances in NHL postseason history, but it wasn’t enough to bring a Stanley Cup back to Edmonton.

McDavid and the Oilers came just short of completing one of the greatest comebacks in hockey history, falling 2-1 to the Florida Panthers in a tight Game 7 in Sunrise, Fla.

Hamilton’s Carter Verhaeghe and Vancouver’s Sam Reinhart scored to lead the Panthers to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup in its third appearance in the final. Sergei Bobrovsky made 23 saves, including a flurry of them late in the third with the Oilers pressing for the equalizer.

“It’s not a dream anymore,” said Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk. “It’s not a dream. It’s reality. I can’t believe it.”

“I just can’t believe we did it,” added Aleksander Barkov.

Head coach Paul Maurice, in his second season with Florida, won the Cup for the first time behind the bench.

“It’s not what I thought it would be,” Maurice said. “It’s so much better.”

Mattias Janmark scored the lone goal for the Oilers, with Stuart Skinner stopping 19 shots. McDavid took home the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the NHL playoffs despite the loss.

“It sucks,” said McDavid.

“You knew it was gonna be tight, Game 7 for the Cup. You knew it was going to be a real tight game and it was gonna come down to one thing here and there.”

Edmonton’s defeat extended Canada’s Cup drought to 31 years. The 1993 Montreal Canadiens remain the last team north of the border to hoist hockey’s holy grail.

“It’s difficult,” McDavid said. “You have to go through a gruelling season, it’s long. You gotta go through four high-end opponents, and you gotta beat them four times. It’s as difficult to do as you can think. It’s tough. Guys that have won it say the same thing. It’s tough.”

The Panthers entered the winner-take-all Game 7 with none of the momentum on their side, having lost three in a row to squander a 3-0 deficit.

But it didn’t matter how they got there. A solid, shutdown Game 7 performance in front of their fans denied Edmonton what would have been its first title in 34 years.

The game got off to a fast start, with the home side needing just 4:27 to ignite the crowd at Amerant Bank Arena courtesy of Verhaeghe’s 11th of the playoffs. As an Oilers penalty expired, Evan Rodrigues threw the puck on net and Verhaeghe was there to deflect it between Skinner’s pads.

Florida’s lead lasted two minutes and 17 seconds.

A sensational saucer pass from Cody Ceci deep in his own zone landed right on the stick of Janmark, who made no mistake on the breakaway by beating Bobrovsky blocker side. It was Ceci’s first point of the Stanley Cup final.

The game remained deadlocked 1-1 until the end of the second period. After stretches of sustained pressure by the Oilers in the offensive zone, the Panthers’ Reinhart moved up the ice on a fast break. The winger patiently held onto the puck as he weighed his options before firing past a partially screened Skinner short side.

That goal was the eventual game-winner, with Bobrovsky and the Panthers defencemen doing their part to keep the puck out with time winding down — including on great chances for McDavid, Zach Hyman and Mattias Ekholm.

“We had lots of looks, it just didn’t go,” said McDavid.

“For the most part it’s just learning lessons,” added Leon Draisaitl on looking forward. “We’ve done that over the last couple of years very well and implemented those lessons. But it’s tough to drag a lesson out of this one when you’re one shot or two shots away from accomplishing everything.”