The Edmonton Oilers have become like an Olympic sprinter who always makes the 100-metre final, but comes up a tenth of a second short of a gold medal. It won’t be easy to take that next step.

Some thoughts and takeaways from the 2025 Stanley Cup Final in which the Florida Panthers repeated as champions…

1. That was the most lopsided a six-game series with multiple overtime games can feel

Yes, the Edmonton Oilers managed to take the Florida Panthers to six games, but it never felt particularly close. Of those six games, the Oilers’ “Time Spent Leading” was at a breath over eight per cent of the total game play, while the Panthers played with the lead for 255:49 (over 61 per cent), an all-time record in the Stanley Cup Final.

Edmonton came back in Game 1 despite trailing by two in the second period after Florida took their foot off the gas, then won in overtime. And they came back from a three-goal deficit in Game 4 to again win in the extra frame. 

Other than that, it felt like any time the game was tied and the Panthers needed to pull away, they could, even if they failed to hold those leads twice. They closed by winning Games 5 and 6 by scores of 5-2 and 5-1, and in the process they tied the record for “most games scoring five-plus goals in a single Stanley Cup Playoff” with 13. Only two other teams have ever done that. 

There are a few empty netters in there, but they scored 28 goals in the six-game Cup Final, an average of 4.5 per. The Oilers, like Florida’s other opponents, just had no answer.