EDMONTON — They ripped your heart out, two Stanley Cup Finals in a row. Left your captain in tears, then rubbed your city’s noses in it at the parade.
The Tkachuks took the party to Italy, where they mouthed off Leon Draisaitl with their “bridesmaid” shtick.
You haven’t beaten them at home since Rexall Place, a skein that runs to 8-0-3 in regulation in the Panthers’ favour. Stylistically, psychologically, physically, they’ve owned you — especially when it matters.
And still, the Edmonton Oilers couldn’t find any juice Thursday, rolling over 4-0 to the Panthers in a game that was never, ever in doubt, from puck drop to the final siren.
“Obviously they had more jump,” said Darnell Nurse.
“We came in with the right mindset but just couldn’t find a way to break them down,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
Yup, Florida beat ‘em for fun — again.
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The Panthers won Games 1-3 in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, then took home the Cup in Game 7, when it was time to stop messing around.
Last spring, the Oilers tied the Final at 2-2 with two of the final three gamed slated for Rogers Place. Florida only needed two of them, winning 5-2 and 5-1 to close the series with ease.
You’d think just looking at that uniform during warmups might piss a guy off a little bit.
“It does,” claimed Adam Henrique. “If you want us to come running around without our sticks then sure, we could do that. But we were out there to play hockey.
“Our focus was on those two points at this time of year and pushing for the playoffs.”
We get that. But sometimes, against some opponents, it takes a little extra emotion.
Not only did Florida have it, they knew they were going to have it at the morning skate.
“I think the juice is going to be here tonight,” Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said before the game. “The regular-season juice that neither one of us gets easily, it’s going to be in the game.”
“You’ve got to get up these games, right? It’s hard not to get up for this one,” reasoned Matthew Tkachuk, a face that should ignite every player on this Oilers roster all on its own. “It doesn’t matter who you play in a playoff series, there’s going to be dislike. When you play a team two years in a row, no matter what round, the dislike just seems to ramp up.”
Dislike?
Edmonton played the Panthers as if they were the Columbus Blue Jackets. Or Seattle.
The Oilers played with the passion of a guy shovelling his walk. They were no more aggressive or physical against this so-called hated oppressor than they would be in the second game of a pre-season back-to-back against the Flames rookies.
Embarrassing?
Of all the places to roll out a disinterested, dispassionate, dispirited effort, a game against 20 guys wearing that Panthers logo is the last place we would have expected to see an effort as flaccid as this one.
“The guys worked really hard. I thought the effort was there but couldn’t find a way to score a goal,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch, in a post-game presser that had more deflections than a net-front clinic hosted by Joe Pavelski, Tomas Holmstrom and Dino Ciccarelli.
“I don’t see it that (his team) didn’t show up and play tonight. We came out strong, first 10 minutes. I thought we had the majority of the play,” defended the coach. “Maybe I’d criticize us for not shooting the puck enough. The effort was there but we couldn’t find a goal.”
Besides the fact the Oilers are now 1-9-2 in games they entered with a two-game winning streak, this effort would have been more easily forgotten about if it were against anyone else. The turtle derby that is the Pacific is still up for grabs, and there’s no doubt Edmonton’s found a much better game of late.
But characterizing a visit by Florida as just another game, or rolling through an increasingly irretrievable contest without even a scrum — let alone an actual scrap or two — reeks of a team that is so even-keeled, it borders on comatose.
So we’ll leave it to Nurse to conclude the evening. A guy who seldom gets caught up the emotion gave the media an impassioned defence of his team, a club that has still not proven it has what it takes this season, through 70 games played.
“Look, everyone comes to the rink with the right mindset. This team, we want to win,” pleaded Nurse. “You want to beat whoever’s on the other side, whether it’s the Florida Panthers or the Calgary Flames.
“Some nights we come out and we’re flat, and that’s on us. We’ve got to find another level to get to. But it’s not for lack of effort, especially with this group.
“I know how much each and every one of these guys — all of us in here — want to win.”
It’s a good thing he knows, because it was surely not visible Thursday night against Florida.
Only one team wanted that game, and it plays in Calgary Friday night.
