How the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers changed their identities to escape the failures that haunted them

At the risk of sounding like an inspirational speaker, the paths to many of our greatest success stories – both in sports and in life – are paved by failure. Sure, it’s cliché, but it’s also true.

It’s certainly true for the two teams we’ll see meet in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Saturday night.

Immediately after the Edmonton Oilers eliminated the Dallas Stars to win Edmonton’s first Western Conference title since 2006, veteran Stars forward Tyler Seguin had this to say about being on the losing end.

“Unfortunately you have to lose a lot to win in this championship. I don’t know why that is. Learn some lessons, keep the fun and prepare for next year.”

Sure, there’s some irony in this quote coming from a guy who won a Stanley Cup as a rookie with the Boston Bruins in 2011, but his message here points more to group arcs than individual ones. Up to this point, he is quite wise and precise.

And while Seguin was talking about his Stars – a team that has been knocking on the door for years – this also applies to the guys on the other side who, this time, emerged victorious in six games.

Before this year, the Oilers had never won a game beyond the second round of the playoffs in eight seasons of the Connor McDavid era. They have reached the Western Conference Finals just once, in 2022, when they were promptly defeated in four games by the Stanley Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche.

Despite consistently being one of the most electrifying offensive teams in the league, with the best player (McDavid) and another on the roster (Leon Draisaitl) in recent years, the Oilers’ Stanley Cup dreams have consistently crumbled – sometimes quickly, sometimes a little. more gradually – when Hockey turned into Playoff Hockey.

In most of these cases, you could point to various combinations of a top-heavy lineup, poor defensive team structure, and subpar goaltending as to why they couldn’t do it. But to zoom out and diagnose as simply as possible: they weren’t designed to play right when games mattered most.

Disappointment has cost many fun and exciting teams trying to overcome their playoff woes. If there is not enough commitment to detail in all three zones and willingness to assume different identities, you will go home sooner than you want.

Ask the Florida Panthers about that.

Two years ago, they ended up as NHLof the best team of the regular season, winning their first Presidents’ Trophy in franchise history. They had the best attack in the league, being the only team in the league to average more than four goals per game.

Then they were defeated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round.

It would have been easy to attribute this exit to facing a more experienced Lightning team – after all, they were back-to-back champions at the time. But Bill Zito, who took over as Florida’s general manager just a few years earlier, felt something was inherently wrong with his club’s DNA. They didn’t defend well enough, the details weren’t there and they were very one dimensional.

That summer, in what appeared to be an impressive pivot at the time, Zito changed coaches – swapping green Andrew Brunette for veteran Paul Maurice – and swapped his team’s leading scorer and current NHL assists leader, Jonathan Huberdeau.

There were reasons why the trade, which sent Matthew Tkachuk to Florida, made sense for the Panthers. Tkachuk was also an undeniably great player who, like Hubderdeau, surpassed 100 points the previous season. (It was only the second time in NHL history that two 100-point scorers from the previous season were traded.) He was younger and came with more team control after agreeing to a long contact extension as part of the deal.

But Huberdeau played a flashier game, was a fan favorite and a proud lifelong Panther who endured Florida’s many lean years. Trade him immediately after not only his best season, but also the team’s best season? That’s the kind of attitude that makes a general manager vulnerable to the wrath of his own fan base.

Even so, Zito was not afraid to rock the boat. Actually, that was the point.

Although some debated the value of Huberdeau versus Tkachuk, no one disputed that they had very different identities. Tkachuk’s game brought a lot more edge and nastiness on both ends of the ice – something Zito clearly wanted for his team.

That desire also helped explain a number of Zito’s other transactions, including the trade for Sam Bennett – widely considered one of the league’s meanest (affectionate) players – at the trade deadline a year earlier. Additionally, the signing of Nick Cousins ​​- widely considered one of the cheapest (disparaging) players in the league – the same summer he signed Tkachuk.

It quickly became clear that the already talented Panthers wanted to change their approach on and off the ice, and the change was seismic and swift. They went from a fun and fairly quiet group to an abrasive group that ruined everyone else’s fun.

Less than a year after Zito’s pivot, Florida reached the playoffs as an eight-seed opponent and utilized maddeningly relentless checking and a tight defensive system to dismantle every team on its way to the Stanley Cup Final. , including a Boston Bruins team that finished with the best regular season in league history.

The Panthers ended up losing to the Golden Knights in the Cup final, but by that point, the proof of concept had already been validated. Not only did they have talent, but they also had a detail-oriented system that required players to agree to win, no matter how pretty or ugly it looked.

Ask Kris Knoblauch about this.

The Oilers coach took over the Edmonton bench last November after a 3-9-1 start, a terrible mark for a team that opened the season as Stanley Cup favorites.

There were rumors that previous manager Jay Woodcroft had to fall on the team’s sword because of poor defending; at the time of his dismissal, the Oilers team save percentage of .864, ranked last in the league.

While goaltending was clearly amplifying the Oilers’ problems, it was also true that their structure under Woodcroft wasn’t good enough either. They played fast and loose and often lost their details, which often led to them getting burned.

But since Knoblauch’s acquisition, there has been a notable shift in the team’s mentality. The Oilers are still fun and can bring a high-octane offense — it’s almost impossible not to when you have McDavid and Draisaitl — but they’ve also shown they can play a responsible, grown-up brand of hockey. It’s not always a cocaine-fueled circus that requires you to control the experience.

There is clearly more adherence to a more detailed game plan under Knoblauch, who has emphasized team defense and more puck tenacity in all three zones. That made a lot of difference.

Despite a fairly modest defensive group on the blue line, Edmonton finished the season as the fifth-best team in the league in terms of goals allowed in their time under Knoblauch. (And yes, they also started getting saves, with a useful .904 save percentage in that span.)

During their most successful stretch of the season, the Oilers won 16 consecutive games and returned to contender status. In 14 of those 16 wins, they allowed two goals or less.

Throughout these playoffs, the Oilers have proven that they can come together defensively as a unit when necessary – a skill that has eluded them in most of their previous Cup quests.

They still had their hurdles on the back end. Two of the top defenders of this modest blue line group, Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci, struggled mightily at times. (Nurse’s 21 goals at 5-on-5 are the most in the playoffs.) But both were also able to bounce back and make a positive impact after getting picked off by the guys around them.

The Oilers have also found a calling card by slaying demons via penalties this postseason. After finishing the regular season with a historically good power play, the other side of their special teams has been historically impressive. En route to the Cup final, Edmonton killed off 93.9% of power plays against them – including 28 consecutive opportunities and counting.

Not bad for a unit that ranked 30th on the penalty kill before Knoblauch (and PK coach Mark Stuart) arrived in November.

We’ve seen the Oilers win a lot of games over the last few years. But under Knoblauch this season and postseason, they’ve proven themselves capable of winning games in a way that previous iterations of the Oilers couldn’t imagine.

Look no further than Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals. After scoring two power play goals early in the game, Edmonton seemed content to sit back and just hold the Stars with a bend-and-don’t-break defensive effort. The final shot total was 35-10 in favor of Dallas, but Edmonton came away with a 2-1 victory thanks to strong defense and a commitment to a defensive structure that limited the quality of those chances.

It seemed unimaginable for the Edmonton Oilers, of all teams, to book a ticket to the Stanley Cup Final in a game that seemed what.

But these aren’t the same Edmonton Oilers you’ve come to know in recent years. And they won’t play the Florida Panthers we thought we knew before last year.

These are two franchises that managed to emerge from a dark era in the last decade, but still had to learn a bit about the flaws that still lingered. These are two teams that realized that they had to consciously change their identity to get where they wanted. And these achievements only came through their respective failures.

Now, if you lose, it won’t be because you couldn’t win. It will simply be because they didn’t do it.