We’re just a few short days away from the beginning of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final.
This year’s championship matchup features the Florida Panthers going to battle with the Edmonton Oilers.
It’s a rare rematch of last summer’s Final, and if this year’s series is anything like last year’s, hockey fans will be quite pleased when the Cup is eventually awarded.
The seven-game extravaganza saw the Panthers take a 3-0 series lead, in convincing fashion, only to get punched in the mouth by Edmonton three straight games to force the winner-take-all matchup in Sunrise.
Game 7 turned out to be an all-timer, and the fact that Florida was able to clinch their first ever Stanley Cup on home ice was something special.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll find out if this year’s series comes anywhere close to being as fun, entertaining and drama filled as the ’24 Final.
As we continue counting down to Game 1, which is set for Wednesday night at 8 p.m. from Edmonton, let’s take a trip down memory lane.
When you can spare a few minutes, check out the Stanley Cup Final mini movie below. You won’t regret it.
They took the Panthers to Game 7 last June but Hitchcock sees a better Oilers today.
“They have learned a very valuable lesson, one that takes a long time to learn,” said the Hall of Famer Hitchcock, whose last coaching job was with his hometown team. “You can talk about it but what the Oilers have learned is there’s a big difference between fighting for space and looking for space.
“The Edmonton Oilers now fight for that space as good as anybody in the National Hockey League. They’re not looking for quick areas, they’re not hoping pucks squirt free. They’re fighting for that space and that’s why they’re going to be such a hard out in this final,” said Hitchcock, who coached defenceman John Klingberg in Dallas and had fellow blueliner Jake Walman when both were in St. Louis, so he has an attachment to the Oilers apart from growing up here.
Marchand, 37, is chattier on the ice than the oftimes laconic Perry, 40.
“As an opposition coach, Marchand can really make you laugh. I know he got on me a few times. Yeah, it was pretty funny,” said Hitchcock.
Marchand’s sense of humour has been on display in Florida as fans throw all the plastic rats on the ice at game’s end — their tradition since Scott Mellanby killed a real rodent in the dressing room at Florida’s home opener in 1995, and Mellanby went out and scored three goals which brought out the “rat-trick” line.
Now?
“They just see all my family out there on the ice and want us to be together,” kidded Marchand in a recent nhl.com story.
Another ex-Oiler in Hockey Hall of Fame
Daryl Reaugh, once the Oilers second-round draft pick in 1984 and back-up in net to Grant Fuhr, was just voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the broadcast wing after his 30 years in the business in Dallas — as a colour commentator and a TV play-by-play man.
