SUNRISE, Fla. — The pain of hearing the Florida Panthers celebrate after Game 7 is gut-wrenching enough for the Edmonton Oilers.
Falling short when this could be their best chance at the Stanley Cup they’ve so desperately wanted to win makes it that much worse.
Though the Oilers probably were the better team overall in the series and valiantly fought back after losing the first three games, they ultimately came up short on the sport’s biggest stage. Monday’s 2-1 loss was the final, heart-breaking blow.
“I’m really proud of everybody for getting to this point,” winger Zach Hyman said, “but it’s something that’s going to always stick with you.”
“You can’t really get much closer than what we were, but we won’t be able to buy anything from that,” Leon Draisaitl said.
Connor McDavid didn’t even return to the ice to accept the Conn Smythe Trophy he won after breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record for assists in a playoff year with 34 and finishing fourth all time with 42 points.
“It sucks,” McDavid said, the anguish evident on his face. “It sucks.”
So close, yet so far.
And after what was billed as a “Cup or bust” campaign, there’s a chilling possibility that things might never get better than this.
“We hate this situation,” blueliner Mattias Ekholm said. “We hate to lose. Coming so close, having that group in there fighting for each other.”
The Oilers are riddled with uncertainty after missing out on that long-desired title.
They squeezed almost every drop out of their roster. There were almost no passengers on this run. However, the Oilers have one of the oldest rosters in the NHL — and their two best players are soon in need of new contracts.
The final year of Draisaitl’s starts next Monday. McDavid has two years left. If those players re-up and hang around for the long term, they’ll be making more money — albeit with a higher salary cap — while inevitably producing less as they age. McDavid is 27. Draisaitl is almost 15 months older.
After the otherworldly one-two punch, almost the entire core is on the wrong side of 30. At 29, Darnell Nurse isn’t quite there yet, but he had a rough go at these playoffs — and everyone knows about the contract. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is 31. Hyman and Evander Kane are 32. Ekholm is 34. Everyone has some sort of protection against a trade other than Ekholm.
“I don’t look at it as it needs to happen (now),” Oilers CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson told The Athletic before the playoffs began. “We’re a team that can challenge for the Cup. My job is for that to happen every year. What we have to do better going forward is have a structured plan that allows us to get younger players into the lineup, when they’re ready, but quicker.
“I feel like this team could be really good for a number of years. We just have to move some pieces around. I don’t think it’s imminent that we have to win.”
Many of the Oilers’ core players were at or near their best in 2023-24. (Sam Navarro / USA Today)
It’s Jackson who leads a front office that has a lot of work in front of them.
There’s a chance GM Ken Holland will hold the position through the end of his contract, which concludes Sunday, and possibly beyond. However, Jackson is tasked with probably replacing the Hockey Hall of Fame manager this summer, while quickly upgrading the mix that will be at training camp in a few months with that potential new hire.
There’s still some room for growth for Evan Bouchard, who has one more season under contract before he has arbitration rights and is due a big pay raise. But it’s hard to figure the 24-year-old will be that much better considering he’s already a point-per-game defenseman and in the Norris Trophy conversation.
From there, it’s just a matter of how much pending restricted free agents Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg improve. They’re basically the two players on the roster who perhaps haven’t actualized yet.
Draft picks are sparse. The prospect pipeline is one of the worst in the league. That’s the cost of going for it over the last few years.
PuckPedia has Oilers with just over $10 million in cap space with only seven forwards and five defensemen on the roster. Even though there are avenues to increase flexibility — say, trading or (more likely) buying out goaltender Jack Campbell — money is tight.
The path to sustainable excellence isn’t obvious.
That’s part of the reason why losing this series hurts so much for this organization. Then there’s not getting it done in a campaign in which so many players were elite.
McDavid recorded 100 assists and had one of the best postseasons ever. Draisaitl was only a smidge off his career norms in the regular season and playoffs, even if he didn’t score a goal in his last nine games and had just three assists in the final. Hyman scored 70 goals between the regular season and playoffs, tying the NHL lead. Bouchard hit another level to break the record for assists by a blueliner in one playoff year.
The Oilers got contributions from throughout the lineup right down to the bottom six, which had been maligned for years. Their penalty kill was nearly flawless. Stuart Skinner stepped up when it mattered in series, going 10-0 in Games 4 to 7 — until Monday’s loss.
“It’s tough to drag a lesson out of this one when you’re really one shot or two shots away from accomplishing everything,” Draisaitl said.
The Oilers had their moments in the final but just weren’t good enough. They should have won Game 1; they were the better team despite being shut out. They were outclassed in Game 2. It’s Game 3, in front of a raucous crowd in Edmonton, that they’ll rue dropping.
They allowed the Panthers to score three goals in a 6:19 span in the second period, the direct result of their own mistakes. It’s exactly what happened when they lost to Vegas in the second round last year and something they vowed they were too “mature” — to borrow the team’s buzzword — to let happen again.
“We just can’t beat ourselves,” winger Warren Foegele said between Games 3 and 4. “We’ve talked about that multiple times since I’ve been here.”
Kudos to them for making this a series, and for responding so well like they have all season when they’ve appeared down and out. But completing the comeback against this Panthers group was always a monumental task.
“It’s tough to string four in a row against a good team like that,” McDavid said.
“You can analyze it to death if you want to,” Ekholm said. “When someone beats you in a seven-game series, they’re the better team.”
The Panthers scored first in Game 7 when Carter Verhaeghe tipped in a shot from Evan Rodrigues 4:27 into the first period. The Oilers responded just 2:17 later when Mattias Janmark scored on a breakaway.
The difference was a Sam Reinhart shot off the rush that beat Skinner short side between his pad and glove. The Oilers had their looks, including a scramble with just over seven minutes left when neither McDavid nor Hyman could shovel home a loose puck. McDavid also redirected a Bouchard shot off target. They couldn’t net the equalizer.
“We never stopped believing,” McDavid said. “We really believed we were going to get one.”
“We created enough looks to find another one,” Draisaitl said, his voice croaking, “but obviously it wasn’t meant to be.”
The Oilers accomplished so much in 2023-24. When Kris Knoblauch arrived as the new head coach on Nov. 12, they languished near the bottom of the standings. It took a quick turnaround to get back on track for the playoffs, let alone the Stanley Cup Final.
“I’m proud of the way we fought all year,” McDavid said. “We were behind the eight-ball almost immediately. We fought an uphill climb for months and months and months.”
That doesn’t make the result any easier.
“We’ve overcome so many obstacles and so much adversity,” Knoblauch said. “There will be a lot of thinking about what happened tonight and the what-ifs.”
Oilers players now head to the summer wondering what could have been — and, as veteran Corey Perry noted earlier in the series, if they’ll ever get back to the Stanley Cup Final.
This isn’t to say the Oilers won’t win the Stanley Cup in the next few years. Alex Ovechkin was 32 when the Capitals won it all in 2018. That Washington team wasn’t the best one for which he played. Not even close.
Sidney Crosby’s Penguins also had some disappointing ousters in between their 2009 and 2016 title wins, though the captain was sidelined for the 2011 postseason due to injury.
All isn’t lost for the Oilers. They still employ two of the best players in the world — at least for now. The supporting cast still has some life in it yet.
“We were darn close and we’re going to be back next year,” Ekholm said.
That might well be true. It’s just that things will now get considerably more difficult — even if McDavid and Draisaitl both finish their careers wearing blue and orange.
Being this close just makes the pain that much greater.
“It’s tough to put into words,” Draisaitl said. “You’re one period, one shot away (from) maybe winning the thing. Now, you’ve got to go through 82 games again and play well enough to even get a kick at it.
“It’s hard right now.”
(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)
