Edmonton Oilers players looks on during the third period against the Florida Panthers in Game 3 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final.Jim Rassol/Reuters
When the lights get bright and gestures matter, hockey towns call on hockey heroes to get the room amped up. Florida doesn’t have any of those, so they phone up DJ Khaled. He’s not busy.
The music producer famous for yelling his own name at ear-splitting autotune did the intros on Monday night. He had no idea what was going on.
“WE ARE ABOUT TO INTRODUCE …” – /pausing to look down and read notes – “… THE OILERS.”
Like a lot of unorthodox things the Panthers do, it worked. Amerant Bank Arena was frothing at puck drop.
Less than a minute later, Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner decided to wander out toward the centre circle to see what it feels like to play forward, leaving the net open for Brad Marchand. 1-0 Florida.
From that point on, the Oilers slowly lost control. They were not completely unhinged – though Evander Kane tried his best. More like a screw started to rattle somewhere deep in the engine. Hard hits became high sticks, and tempers didn’t just flare up, they guttered.
Much has been made in this series of Florida’s tendency to accidentally fall into opposing goalies, and happen to hit them in the head while doing it.
The falling into is not the important thing. The getting away with it is what matters.
Late in the first, Oiler Victor Arvidsson tried it out. Instead of tripping backward into the net – a Florida special – he went through the front. That gave netminder Sergei Bobrovsky a chance to avoid the worst of it, and then wildly embellish the aftermath.
Arvidsson was penalized. Carter Verhaeghe scored. The period ended. Kane went after Matthew Tkachuk, who fled him. DJ Khaled played the intermission. That is the Sunrise way.
Edmonton pulled one back through Corey Perry – a nifty tip in front of the net. Just as things were starting to tilt their way, John Klingberg tried to carry the puck up the boards in his own end, and ran straight into an official. The resulting loose puck fell to Sam Reinhart. Two-goal lead restored.
A few minutes later, Oiler Vasily Podkolzin was relieved of the puck twice in less than 10 seconds. The second robbery theft resulted in a languorous two-on-none and a three-goal advantage.
That’s when Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch went full Victor Frankenstein and started stitching lines together. That included Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl co-headlining a five-on-five appearance.
McDavid ended up getting smoked at the Florida blue line by Aaron Ekblad, prompting a short rest backstage. Doubtless, that absence will be the major storyline between now and Game 4.
By the end of the second, things were starting to get silly. Normally sanguine Oiler Darnell Nurse cross-checked Anton Lundell in the back near a scrum while the ref stared at him. Nurse looked over to see if he’d been penalized, realized he had not and then butt ended Lundell in the head. That one did the trick.
By that point, you could feel the Oilers working toward a common goal: beating traffic back to the team hotel.
After Skinner was pulled apart in the crease by a Panthers’ power play early in the third, he was yanked. Then it was time for the usual fistic shenanigans, en route to the 6-1 loss. Florida won those, too. I’m sure it could have been worse, but I’d be hard pressed to imagine how.
It’s been nearly three weeks since the Oilers played a really bad game. That was the opener of their series against Dallas, where they allowed five goals in the third period. Since then, they’ve won most of the time and always been right in it. One stinker isn’t just forgivable. It’s understandable. You can’t be up for it every single night.
The problem is that Florida never seems to play a bad game when it matters. They got blanked by Carolina, but were up three games to none at the time. Their only weakness is a tendency to lose series openers, after which they pop up swinging.
If this was Florida’s wake-up game, it reminded you of their series against the Maple Leafs. A Marchand overtime winner in a game that would have put them in huge trouble had they lost it, followed by a dominating win in their grinding house style.
If there’s any good to come of it, Monday’s pratfall will have demonstrated to Edmonton how small its margins are. It isn’t a talent problem, but a question of mentality. Florida knows that it knows how to win the biggest games. The Oilers don’t. Per Brad Treliving, they have entered the DNA testing period of their campaign at the very least, and possibly of the Connor McDavid era writ large.
That makes Thursday’s game an elimination contest in everything but fact. The Panthers may win. Edmonton must win.