History has a way of repeating itself in sports in a fashion that sometimes defies logic.
Even in the case of the Stanley Cup, the NHL’s championship trophy that’s widely thought to be the hardest to win in all of sports, there are telling patterns. How else are you able to explain the eerily similar tales that two of the league’s generational talents share regarding their journey to hoisting their first Stanley Cup?
Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers lost his first Stanley Cup Final to the Islanders in 1983.
The very next yr, Gretzky and the Oilers topped the Islanders on the identical stage to win all of it.
Detroit denied Sidney Crosby and the Penguins of his first Stanley Cup in 2008.
Crosby and the Penguins got here all the way in which back the very next season to reverse the outcomes on the Red Wings.
Now, it’s Connor McDavid’s turn.
McDavid has his second shot at claiming Lord Stanley for the primary time in his 10-year NHL profession, because the Oilers are set to face the Panthers in a highly anticipated Stanley Cup Final rematch starting on Wednesday in Edmonton.
It was this same core of Panthers players — Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad and Sergei Bobrovsky — who got in his way last time.
Like Gretzky and Crosby before him, McDavid could have to exorcise his demons to cement his status and capture his first Stanley Cup.
McDavid, last yr’s Conn Smythe winner despite coming out on the losing end, falls right into a highly exclusive category as certainly one of the best to ever do it. He’s, quite simply, the perfect player in the whole National Hockey League, and he has been for a while now.
There won’t ever be one other McDavid, identical to there won’t ever be one other Gretzky or Crosby.
This can be a legacy series for the 28-year-old, who’s spearheading the Oilers with 26 points (six goals, 20 assists) in 16 games. Though McDavid strives for a similar results because the sensational players before, the Panthers have their eyes on something else entirely: a dynasty.
“I believed that it was going to be us two again,” Tkachuk, the center and soul of Florida’s roster, told reporters recently. “I believe we’re the 2 best teams within the league. If all the pieces would go right, it could probably be us two again within the finals. I even have that confidence in our team, and so they were the perfect team we played last yr within the playoffs. I stand by that and I believed that on the time. And here we’re again.”
Within the handshake line on the conclusion of the Panthers’ seven-game victory over the Oilers last season, Tkachuk told McDavid he’d see him there again next yr.
Anyone who has frolicked around Tkachuk knows the 27-year-old wholeheartedly believed it when he said it.
The Panthers are onto their third straight Stanley Cup Final appearance and are within the midst of their fifth consecutive postseason (not including the qualifying round within the 2020 bubble playoffs). After losing in five games to the Golden Knights in 2023, Florida was widely thought to be the Eastern Conference team to beat on its option to securing the franchise’s first championship last yr.
The team Bill Zito has constructed has been viewed as a type of blueprint.
That’s on account of the whole and utter fear the Panthers have struck into the hearts of each team they’ve faced within the postseason over the past few seasons. They’ve redefined what it means to be hard to play against. They’re a force in every sense of the word.
Pulling out a second Stanley Cup win in three tries can be an announcement. If the Panthers manage to fend off McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and company once more, they’d grow to be just the tenth club in NHL history to win back-to-back titles.
After keeping his hands off the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl last yr, nonetheless, McDavid switched it up and picked it right up this yr.
The work to reverse the outcomes has already been put in motion.
“We didn’t last yr,” he told Sportsnet from the ice in Dallas. “Give it a go this yr.”
