Three critical factors have Oilers on the brink

After a disappointing showing in Game 5, the Edmonton Oilers are one game away from again losing the Stanley Cup Final.

Consecutive defeats by the Florida Panthers in the final would leave a serious organizational sting. The Panthers have again proven to be a matchup problem for the Oilers and after the trouncing in Game 5, you can rest assured Kris Knoblauch and Edmonton’s coaching staff have every potential lineup change on the table.

How did we get here? For my money, there are three key reasons why the Panthers are again at the doorstep of history — and if Edmonton cannot find answers to these problems, that Stanley Cup may be handed out as soon as Tuesday night.

So, what’s going wrong for this Edmonton club? Three big things, starting with what we talked about in our series primer.

1. Florida’s middle-six forwards are dominating

Entering the series, we talked extensively about the matchup problems the Panthers middle-six forwards could create with their lethal combination of speed, physicality, and credible two-way play.

The Eastern Conference playoffs had all of this on display, with the Panthers third line of Eetu Luostarinen, Brad Marchand, and Anton Lundell incinerating teams. The same has held true against Edmonton, which is doubly important because beating an Oilers team in a series typically means winning the non-McDavid minutes.

The Panthers have tinkered with their lines over the course of this series, but their depth forwards are again winning this series.

In an otherwise tight matchup, Marchand (+6) and Lundell (+5) in particular have crushed the Oilers over the first five games, giving Florida a three-goal advantage at even strength on the series:

It’s not that the Panthers have the scariest first line in hockey. It’s that they have at least three forward lines who are going to routinely win their minutes, backstopped by three credible defensive pairings and a Hall of Fame goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky.

It takes a superhuman effort to put a team like that on its back, and though the Oilers have the top-end weaponry to embarrass any team in the league, their depth has faltered under the pressure.

But here’s what’s doubly problematic for the Oilers. In the case of Marchand and Lundell, a huge chunk of their minutes have been spent head-to-head with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, who are -5 and -3 respectively in those minutes. Edmonton’s best players are losing the goal battle against Florida’s middle six, not just their depth skaters.

So, not only is Florida’s depth in full control, they’re doing a good piece of the damage against Edmonton’s superstar forwards.

2. Power Play vs. Powerless Play

This is the first year in a while the Oilers power play hasn’t looked like the most dynamic unit in the league; the performance was good enough where it wasn’t a concern during the regular season, but it is a serious problem here and now.

From 2020-24 the Oilers power play was comfortably best in the league, averaging 10.6 goals per 60 minutes. This year, they dropped down to 11th (8.9 goals per 60).

I don’t think anyone raised an eyebrow at Edmonton’s regular-season power play slippage, especially with key players (starting with McDavid) missing weeks of action.

But the degradation in production has carried into the postseason and it’s officially a problem in the Florida series.

Not only has the Oilers power play been stymied by Bobrovsky and company (7.0 goals per 60 minutes played in the series), they’re being nearly doubled up by the Panthers power play units (12.0 goals per 60 minutes played). Over five games, Florida has seven power-play goals from six skaters, led by Matthew Tkachuk’s pair. Compare that to the Oilers: just four power-play goals, half of those by Draisaitl, and one of those four erased by a goal from the Panthers penalty kill.

3. Goaltending, Goaltending, Goaltending

Whether you have a workhorse No. 1 goaltender or a platoon-style setup a la Edmonton, the math doesn’t change: teams that see regular goaltending underperformance are losing teams in aggregate.

It’s too critical a position, and flame-out performances like we saw in the first half of Game 4 by Stuart Skinner, or the besieged Calvin Pickard in Game 5 can be hard to overcome.

The Oilers might be one of the only teams capable of erasing a nightmarish goaltending performance (and hey, they did just that in Game 4 with a miracle three-goal comeback!), but it’s not the way you want to live against high-quality competition like Florida. It’s even more the case when you are dealing with Bobrovsky, a netminder who can stand on his head for a game if need be.

Simply put, Bobrovsky has been meaningfully better than the Skinner and Pickard:

Goals saved versus expected considers the shot profile (or, quality) faced by each goaltender. So even though Bobrovsky may be playing behind a relatively sturdier defence, there is no doubt he has been part of the solution in stymieing this Oilers offence; the opposite, of course, has been true for the beleaguered duo manning Edmonton’s net. There’s nearly a six goal difference between the two sides across five games, an untenable position, to state the obvious.

These three critical factors have pushed Edmonton to the brink of elimination. I’m still going down with the ship and think the Oilers can steal this series, but it’s impossible to see how they do it without a meaningful reversal on at least two of these fronts.

Enjoy Game 6!

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference