The puck drops for the 2025 Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday, June 4. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a rematch of last year’s final, won by Florida in seven games. The last Stanley Cup rematch took place in 2009 when the Pittsburgh Penguins faced off against the Detroit Red Wings for the second straight year.
The last time a Canadian team claimed the cup was in 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens beat Wayne Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings in his only non-Oilers Stanley Cup Final appearance. It will be a major storyline in the series whether Canada can finally break its Stanley Cup drought.
Edmonton has one thing going for them that most of the previous Canadian teams trying to break the streak didn’t have. This year, the Oilers have home ice advantage over the Panthers. The reverse was true last season.
Since that last Canadian cup, there have been seven Canadian teams to advance to the finals. All but one took place after the 2005 NHL lockout. In every one of those series, with one exception, the team north of the border had the lower seed and lacked home ice advantage.
The one exception was the 2011 Vancouver Canucks. They were that season's Presidents Trophy winners, but lost in seven games to the Boston Bruins. There hasn’t been a Canada vs. Canada Stanley Cup Final since 1989 between Calgary and Montreal.
Edmonton and Florida both entered the playoffs as the third-ranked team in their division. Last season, Edmonton was ranked second in the Pacific Division while Florida won the Atlantic Division crown. This will be only the second Stanley Cup Final to feature a Canadian team since the NHL re-alignment that took place in the 2013-2014 season. The 2021 final that featured the Canadiens operated under a different format due to pandemic travel restrictions.
We don’t need to tell you how important home ice advantage is. The Oilers went 2-1 in their three home games during last season’s seven-game series. This season, Edmonton enters the final round with a record of 6-1 at Rogers Place. Combined over the past two postseasons (up to this point) the Oilers are 11-4 at home.
Florida’s road record is 8-2 in this year’s playoffs, so don’t think they’ll be easy to push around from away Amerant Bank Arena. The Panthers also began every series of the playoffs on the road. The last two teams to do so, the 1995 New Jersey Devils and 2012 Los Angeles Kings, both went on to win the Stanley Cup.
The most infamously bipolar aspect of Edmonton’s roster is their goaltending, as Stuart Skinner does a “Jekyll and Hyde”-esque transformation between being elite and contributing to the Oilers downfall. Skinner is 3-1 at home in these playoffs with a 1.50 goals against average, .945 save percentage and one shutout. That one loss was the only home game Skinner allowed more than one goal was a Game 3 victory for the Vegas Golden Knights in the second round.
As Dan Rosen wrote for NHL.com this “series could be determined by which version of Skinner shows up.” Another interesting point Rosen made was the success of Florida’s third line on the road. The third line of Brad Marchand, Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen has average more than three points per game on the road. Containing Marchand and company should be a priority for the Oilers on home ice.
Let’s look at those 2011 Canucks as a cautionary tale. That year the Canucks went 10-4 at the similarly named Rogers Arena. Their loss is more attributed to an infamous Game 7 shutout (en route to a Tim Thomas Conn Smythe winning performance) and the ensuing riot more than anything else. Game 7 of that year’s series was Vancouver’s only home loss since the playoffs second round.
Last year’s series was closer than any of us thought it would be when Florida took a 3-0 series lead. Edmonton went back to even the series before losing Game 7 by a score of 2-1 on the road. The home ice advantage is one thing Edmonton would love to tip in their favor.