The Oilers are defeated by the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year with a 5-1 decision on Tuesday in Game 6 at Amerant Bank Arena
SUNRISE, FL – The Florida Panthers are back-to-back Stanley Cup champions.
After last season’s rally from a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Final ended in Game 7 heartbreak for the Edmonton Oilers, their 2025 rematch against the defending champions ultimately ended in similar fashion on Tuesday night with a 5-1 defeat in Game 6 at Amerant Bank Arena, falling 4-2 in the series.
“We lost to a really good team,” Oilers captain Connor McDavid said. “Nobody quit. Nobody threw the towel in. They’re a heck of a team. They’re back-to-back Stanley Cup champions for a reason.”
Forward Sam Reinhart scored four goals for the Panthers in their opportunity to lift the Stanley Cup on home ice for the second straight year, becoming the first player since Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard for the Montreal Canadiens in 1952 to score four goals in a Stanley Cup Final match.
Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky was excellent to backstop the Panthers to another championship with 24 clutch saves, giving up his only goal to winger Vasily Podkolzin when Florida was leading 5-0 with 4:42 remaining in the third period. Edmonton netminder Stuart Skinner stopped 20 of 23 shots in the defeat.
Centre Sam Bennett was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner with his playoff-leading 15 goals.
“They played a consistent game. They didn’t change once through the whole series,” Skinner said. “I felt like our game was up and down a little bit here and there, and that’s how they play. They play that game all year, and it goes into the playoffs and they stick to it. They do the exact same thing every night, and in our game, we weren’t as consistent as they were.”
After coming so close to accomplishing their ultimate goal and suffering heartbreak for the second straight year, it’s hard to begin thinking about next season right now if you’re the Oilers, but they’ll look to regroup and restrengthen in the summer before trying to do it all over again in the 2025-26 NHL season.
We thank you for everything this season, Oil Country.
We’ll be back soon.
“Still a lot of confidence and belief,” McDavid said of his team. “I don’t think people thought we were gonna make it this far. We obviously believed, but came up just short again.”
“We became together at the right time. A lot of difficult circumstances coming down the stretch with injuries and guys fighting through things, and we just found a way to get here. We obviously didn’t find a way to get enough, but credit to a lot of guys.”
The Panthers are the 2025 Stanley Cup champions with a 5-1 win
You can’t allow these Panthers any opportunity to pounce, because they’ve proven with their championship quality that they can punish you.
Despite the Oilers starting strongly for the second straight game with lots of pressure in the opening minutes, where Corey Perry sparked his group early with a hard hit delivered on Brad Marchand near the penalty box, Edmonton’s difficulties in the first period of this series continued when they committed their first of two turnovers in the opening frame that led directly to Panthers’ goals.
“We kept on saying we want to try to win a 2-1 game, but we never found a way to do that,” McDavid said post-game. “They have great players. How many guys had 20-plus points in their postseason? They’re as deep as it comes. I thought we put a pretty good period, but we made two mistakes and were chasing again.”
The Blue & Orange had been outscored by the Panthers 7-0 in the first period over the past three games coming into Tuesday’s elimination Game 6 and were behind again 1-0 at 15:24 of the first period when a misplayed pass from Mattias Ekholm to Evan Bouchard resulted in his partner coughing it up to Sam Reinhart, who evaded the clearance attempt of Ekholm with his dangle before moving it to his forehand and chopping it past Stuart Skinner for the early lead.
Reinhart notched the game-winning goal in the second period of last year’s deciding Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final between these two sides, and his fantastic individual effort in the first five minutes of Game 6 lifted the Panthers into a first-period advantage for the sixth time in this series.
Connor speaks after the Oilers dropped Game 6 in Florida
Skinner had to reset to make an important stop on Jonah Gadjovich quickly after the Panthers went ahead, before a pair of penalties to Evander Kane and Matthew Tkachuk created a four-on-four that the Oilers looked to exploit with extra ice available for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Bouchard blasted a dangerous shot from the point on target during the four-on-four that Bobrovsky kicked away with the right pad before he parried away another good look from Brett Kulak in the slot to help the Panthers escape the situation with their lead intact.
Eventually, they doubled their lead.
In the final minute of the period, the Panthers made it 2-0 on another turnover from the Oilers, having a Bouchard zone entry picked off by Anton Lundell to create a quick counter-attack where Matthew Tkachuk took a pass from Anton Lundell as the rid man coming over the blueline before beating Skinner through a screen despite the netminder getting a piece of his shot with the glove.
Edmonton was outscored 9-0 by the Panthers in the first period over the final four games of the Final after trailing by a pair through 20 minutes on Tuesday.
The Panthers win 5-1 in Game 6 to capture the Stanley Cup
The Oilers had a slight 10-9 shot advantage over the Panthers during each of the first two periods, but the chances weren’t going in.
Meanwhile, Florida continued to capitalize on the looks Edmonton gave them.
The pair of McDavid and Perry had two different looks at a two-on-one in the early stages of the second period for the Oilers, where McDavid had the puck taken off his stick on the first attempt by Niko Mikkola before Corey Perry wasn’t able to bury the captain’s pass across the crease on the second look.
With less than three minutes left in the frame, the Panthers made it 3-0 when they wore the Oilers down in their own zone, having a long shot from Carter Verhaeghe mishandled by Stuart Skinner to allow Aleksander Barkov to throw the rebound into the crease and have it go in off the skate of Reinhart for his second goal of the contest.
“It was a nothing shot,” Skinner said. “I tried to squeeze it into my arm and it popped out. He shot it at the blocker side, which is smart, but I put it in a spot that I thought was gonna be okay. Then he just shot it on the backside.”
Stuart speaks after the Oilers defeat to Florida in the Stanley Cup Final
The Panthers’ forecheck continued to dominate the Oilers in this series, helping create turnovers that extended shifts in the offensive zone, which seemed to produce chances for them every time.
“Their forecheck was great. We. They tilted the rink,” McDavid said. “They were able to stay on top of us all over the place. Never able to generate any momentum up the ice. We kept trying the same thing over and over again, just banging our heads against the wall, so credit to them. They played well.”
The Oilers trailed 3-0 after 40 minutes and were going to need their ninth comeback victory of the playoffs to keep their season alive.
“We didn’t get to their goaltender enough either in Game 5 or Game 6,” Ekholm said. “We weren’t able to generate a goal in either of the first 40 minutes in either game. So it’s hard to win games when that’s the case, but give them credit. They’re a good team. I do think that there’s another level to our game.”
Kris speaks after the Oilers fell to the Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final
Needing to make something happen after trailing 3-0 entering the final 10 minutes, the Oilers pulled Stuart Skinner near the seven-minute mark with an offensive-zone faceoff, but hopes of a late comeback were dashed when Reinhart completed his hat trick into the empty net with 6:34 remaining.
Reinhart notched his fourth goal of the contest into another empty net 1:29 later.
After Vasily Podkolzin tapped home a loose puck in the crease to make it 5-1 with 4:32 left in their season, the Panthers would see out their second straight Stanley Cup championship on home ice to the raucous roars inside Amerant Bank Arena as time expired and the celebrations ensued.
Aleksander Barkov lifted the Stanley Cup for the second straight year after Sam Bennett was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
“The guys that fought really hard,” Knoblauch said. “Unfortunately, it hurts just because we felt that we could have won it all. Getting so close last year and getting so close this year, a lot had fallen into place and it did very early in the playoffs.
“I’m very happy with the guys. They gave a tremendous effort.”
Podkolzin puts the Oilers on the board in the third period of Game 6
