The good news for the Florida Panthers is this: There is a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night, and it will be at home.
And by then they need to figure out a lot of things.
Another shot at winning the Stanley Cup turned into another power outage for the Panthers on Friday night, as Florida lost 5-1 to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 of the title series. A 3-0 series lead is no more, and the season will end Monday night, either with the Panthers celebrating a huge escape or dealing with major embarrassment watching the Oilers lift the Cup on their home floor.
The list of things the Panthers didn’t like on Friday night was long, namely a goal by Aleksander Barkov that was disallowed after an offside challenge by Edmonton in the second period. Florida was furious after having the goal taken away; As expected, Edmonton was excited.
According to NHL policy, “the original on-ice decision will be overturned if, and only if, a conclusive and irrefutable determination can be made based on video evidence that the original on-ice decision was clearly incorrect. If a review is inconclusive and/or there is any doubt as to whether the on-ice decision was correct, the original on-ice decision will be upheld.”
But while that decision surely changed the game a bit, the Panthers had more problems.
Florida, on a night when it could have won the Cup, had nothing offensively during the first period, managing just two shots on goal to set a season low in the 105th game of the season. Midway through the second half, the Panthers only had six shots. Edmonton’s defense has improved greatly since the start of the series, but many of the Panthers’ biggest names were invisible on the stat sheet.
Sam Reinhart, the team’s leading scorer, didn’t get his first shot on goal until 4:47 remained. Matthew Tkachuk didn’t get his first goal until 3:09 left. The power play was scoreless three times and is 1 for 19 in the series.
It has been a radical change. Through the first eight periods of this series, the cumulative score was Florida 11, Edmonton 2. In the subsequent 10 periods, the score was Edmonton 20, Florida 5. 18 goals were allowed in a three-game span of the Cup Final Stanley. just five times before, and Florida just became the sixth team on that list. None of the top five teams won the title.
And now the seventh game awaits us.
Information from The Associated Press.
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