2025 Stanley Cup Final preview, prediction

A rematch for the ages

Well after a 2-0 Conference Final prediction (finally!), we’re up to a 9-5 series record in the 2025 playoffs. Not the best, but let’s try to close out the season and finish strong.

It might seem like forever in between series (but what if I told you that this break between Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final happens similarly almost every year due to unpredictable CF end dates and kowtowing to rightsholders’ wishes*) but we have made it. The Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers are right back where they were last year, ready to pick up after a 2-1 Game 7 victory by the Panthers sent Connor McDavid and the Oilers into the abyss.

(*However, having two days off in between all but two of the games, even when travel sometimes isn’t required, which could make the series last up to 17 days? Not as cool or necessary!)

Now the question shifts to whether or not it will be a budding Floridian dynasty or the obvious story of redemption – which in a truly poetic twist gives McDavid the chance to join Sid and Wayne at paying back the team that beat them in the Final one year later. Could it be that sweet and neat of a finish to bring today’s mega-star into hockey immortality? Depends on who you ask.

• Opta Analyst: 55% chance Florida
• The Athletic Model: 55% chance Florida
• The Athletic anonymously sourcing 22 NHL coaches and 18 team executives: 21-19 Edmonton
• NHL.com writers: 8-8 split

It’s pretty close! Modeling and data tends to favor the Panthers — Florida has the more consistent goaltender, and Edmonton will have to deal with the injury-loss of Zach Hyman, whose season is over. Those two factors push what otherwise would be a tight series into Florida’s favor to many, and they should be meaningful.

Then again, it may not matter that much. Because Edmonton has McDavid, who looks singularly focused on doing whatever it takes to become a Stanley Cup champion. Many thought coming into the Dallas series that the Stars had the better goalie, and that didn’t work out so well for them because that “better goalie” had the task of stopping Edmonton. That’s proven to be the issue so far. McDavid put up nine points in the five games, which while impressive enough on its own, doesn’t capture his dominance on the puck.

And while Hyman’s unavailability for this series is a valid and obvious talking point, it shouldn’t erase what Edmonton is getting out of maybe the forgotten No. 1 overall pick in Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. According to tired, conventionally accepted talking points heading into that series, Dallas had the better depth players. It didn’t work out that way on the ice. Nugent-Hopkins, in the chart above, contributed to more scoring chances than anyone on the Stars last series. Nugent-Hopkins matched McDavid with nine points against the Stars, RNH is up to 18 this playoff in 16 games.

No one on Edmonton bucked the prevailing wisdom more than Stuart Skinner. After giving up five goals in his first game back in the net in Game 2 due to Calvin Pickard’s injury, Skinner would go onto inexplicably heat back up. Here’s his game log from Yahoo

Yeah, that’ll do to give up five total goals over four games. Do that for this Edmonton offense and it will result in victories.

All of that is part of what makes Edmonton a fun team. They defy expectations, and surprise you with performances out of left field, all the while the two main engines of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl bring exactly what is expected seemingly every shift, period, game and series. Edmonton’s failed on some redemption cases — Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner are barely in the lineup — only to see different depth performances like Evander Kane and Corey Perry pitch in big time . Their best defender in Matthias Eklholm was out for most of the playoff and it barely made an impact. Jake Walman, Brett Kulak and Evan Bouchard stepped right into pick up all of the slack. The goalie carousel spins until it magically starts working. The Oilers take what seems like it should make sense about them, and flips it around 180 degrees.

They’ll need every bit of that logic-defying run of luck and performance to take down the champs.

The Panthers have been constructed wonderfully for playoff hockey. They’ve got some high draft picks and then augmented it by an endless wave of external pickups, with Seth Jones and Brad Marchand being the latest adds. Both were OK enough on the surface but have fit into the machine brilliantly, just as Sam Bennett and Carter Verhaeghe and Matthew Tkachuk and Evan Rodrigues did before them. Somehow even spare parts like Nate Schmidt and Nikko Mikkola are transformed into legitimately helpful players within the machine known as these Panthers. It’s astounding to see the synergy to which the players mesh into what Paul Maurice wants and how it all just works so seamlessly.

It’s an endless credit to the management and coaching of Florida to make three straight Stanley Cup Finals. In 2010 the Penguins looked pretty spent trying the same. Hell, in 2017 going back-to-back the Pens virtually sputtered to the finish with the tank on E, if we’re being honest. Florida barely looks phased, even after playing more games in this three-year stretch than any team in NHL history.

2025 has been an excessively home-heavy playoff in the NHL. Per The Athletic, this year the home teams have won 61.3% of games. It was only 51.7% in the 2021-24 postseasons. Yet, the buzzsaw known as the Panthers doesn’t care where games are – Florida is 8-2 on the road this playoff, and they haven’t just won they have a +27 goal differential on the road. Naturally in the year where every home team is winning, this Panther team asserts their dominance by being good enough to not fall into that trap. That’s something to remember with Edmonton having the home ice “advantage”. (If history is our guide, it may be worth pointing out FLA was only 1-2 last year’s SCF in Oil country, with a much better 3-1 SCF record at home).

If the stars of McDavid and Aleksander Barkov manage to largely wash one another out, the third line battles are always interesting matchups. A big key to FLA’s success has been the Marchand’s line with Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell tipping the scales. Edmonton’s isn’t as vaunted, the returning-from-injury Connor Brown was working with Adam Henrique and Trent Frederic in recent practices. If it comes down to which third lines elevates, the safe bet is Florida.

Of course, hockey being hockey, the biggest x-factor is always goaltending. Sergei Bobrovsky has been considered inconsistent but he’s really locked in lately. Twisting the sample size to the most charitable of his last nine games, Bobrovsky has a .944 save percentage and as many shutouts as losses (2) to go with seven total wins.

Bobrovsky had a sort of Stanley Cup Final reminiscent of Marc-Andre Fleury in 2009. Bob had a .899 overall save% against the Oilers but he conceded 0, 1, 3, and 1 goal(s) in the games that Florida won, proving the Fleury method works where it is OK to have a stinker or two if the goalie can lock down and give four good (or even really good) performances around them.

When you weigh it all up, how does it shake out? Hopefully with a great series. Either result sets up some monumental storylines — you get McDavid bulling his way to the top while breaking Canada’s 32-year Cup drought or the Panthers staking their claim as one of the best teams in the modern NHL era. It’s always the joy of a career to win a Stanley Cup under any circumstances but this one is set up to be a real doozy.

In the end, well, I guess I’m a sentimentalist. McDavid scored the OT game winner at 4 Nations a few months ago, but he’s really going to etch his place in history if Edmonton gets four more wins. Here’s to thinking the story of paralleling Crosby and Gretzky of getting over SCF heartbreak by beating the very team that beat you is too good not to happen, while giving another marathon series a fitting goodbye to the 2024-25 season. Prediction: Oilers in 7.