Are the Panthers and Oilers Out of Gas?

Ty Emberson of the Edmonton Oilers shoves Carter Verhaeghe of the Florida Panthers at the Amerant Bank Arena on November 22, 2025. (Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images)

All summer, the big question hanging over the NHL was whether Florida and Edmonton were destined to meet in the Stanley Cup Final yet again, for the third straight year, or if any new contenders would emerge to take their place. A couple of months into the new season, we might just have our answer… and it’s not the one fans of the incumbent teams were hoping to hear.

Instead of starting strong in 2025-26, both the Panthers and Oilers have stumbled badly enough that the conversation has shifted — from talk of another Finals rematch to simply whether the playoff math will add up for either team anymore. After suffering twin losses on Tuesday, Florida currently ranks dead last in the Eastern Conference standings, while Edmonton would also miss the playoffs if the season ended today. Fortunately for both teams, it doesn’t — but they need to start winning again soon if they’re still going to try to be just the second pair of back-to-back-to-back Finalists in NHL history.

In Tuesday’s run of the Elo forecast simulation model odds, the Oilers were down to 69 percent to make the playoffs (and just a 9 percent chance to make the Finals) while the Panthers dipped even lower, to 52 percent for the playoffs (8 percent to make the Finals). For Edmonton, that rivaled a season-low, and for Florida it was actually their lowest probability of the entire season to date:

In fairness, we’ve seen each of these teams start seasons slow before. The 2022-23 Panthers were below .500 so deep into the schedule that I wrote this piece wondering if they’d erred badly in acquiring Matthew Tkachuk and completely remaking their previously high-flying roster:

Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Tkachuk and Friction Costs

(I ended up being very wrong, for the record!)

They were hovering around .500 into mid-December of 2023-24, and not too far above it by mid-January of last season, either. In their current incarnation under coach Paul Maurice, this team never seems to hit its stride until spring is around the corner — at which point they usually become very dangerous. And even more so than the Panthers, the Oilers have been notorious for their slow starts in recent seasons — with 2023-24 standing out in particular, but the team carrying a collective record of 46-49 before December of the past four seasons overall with a -0.24 goals-per-game differential.

In recent seasons, however, this year is as bad as we’ve seen both teams slump early on. The harmonic mean of the Panthers (1539) and Oilers (1532) Elo ratings — currently 1535.3 — is the lowest it’s been on any single day since Nov. 10, 2023, when Florida was still trying to prove its surprise run to the 2023 Finals was not a total fluke and Edmonton was literally just days from firing coach Jay Woodcroft for underperformance. The idea of the Panthers and Oilers meeting in of the next two Cup Finals seemed far-fetched then, and we’re kind of back there again.

For Florida, they can point to injuries as one of the primary causes of their sluggish start. According to the excellent NHL Injury Viz site, only the Vegas Golden Knights had devoted more cap space to injured players than the Panthers as of Nov. 28 — a figure that was headlined by Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov, who might be the Panthers’ two best players (and neither of whom have played yet this entire season):

That’s not Florida’s only problem — the inconsistent goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky has reared its head again, landing the Cats 25th in save percentage to start the year. But judgment will be rendered on their three-peat chances once they get all (or at least most) of their pieces back; they just need to stay within striking distance in the playoff race until then. That means more than what they’ve done so far, but the players they have — with the exception of Brad Marchand, who has been awesome at age 37 — are capable of giving more as well.

Edmonton might genuinely be in more trouble, as

pointed out a few weeks ago:

The Oilers’ annual early-season swoon usually comes with underlying numbers that suggest things will sort themselves out eventually. This year, however, those numbers aren’t nearly as forgiving, with the team underwater in their share of expected goals and scoring chances at 5-on-5. This Edmonton team is simply getting outplayed too often.

Unlike the Panthers, they can’t point to injuries, either — their three best players (Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard) have played every game and are producing mostly as expected. And yet, the Oilers rank 17th in scoring, 29th in goals allowed and 28th in goal differential with one-third of the schedule already in the books. Some of that is being dragged down by terrible goaltending (Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard’s collective .869 SV% is the worst in hockey), but Edmonton is usually able to overcome bad-to-mediocre goaltending. Not so this year, at least thus far.

It’s important to not completely overstate the severity of the Panthers and Oilers’ situation. Even after their recent dips, both are more likely to make the playoffs than not (i.e., odds over 50 percent). It would be shocking for us to get to the playoffs and find neither Florida nor Edmonton waiting there.

But for a season where we were wondering if and when the two-team Cup Finals hegemony would finally be broken, well, we may be watching that happen in real time — because neither team looks like they’re remotely ready to make another deep postseason run at the present moment.

Filed under: NHL, Hockey