It was a do-or-die situation for the Edmonton Oilers, and with the stakes at their highest, I was expecting our boys to come up with their best effort of the series and drag the series back to Alberta. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anywhere close. Instead, it was the Panthers who rose to the moment and executed their game perfectly, repeating as Stanley Cup champions with a 5-1 win in Game 6.

The Oilers only led in the Stanley Cup Final for 33 minutes and 51 seconds. That’s not even two periods’ worth of playing with the lead throughout a six-game series. And while there are plenty of reasons for that, the biggest one I can think of is that the Panthers were just the better team. We can complain and argue about any other detail or player imaginable, but the honest answer will always be that Florida outworked, outscored, out-executed, out-communicated, out-dove, and out–special-teams’d the Oilers for the bulk of the series. At every position, the Panthers had guys step up to higher heights than anything the Oilers could counter with. It wasn’t even close, in fact. How else would you describe the way they shut down McDavid and Draisaitl so effectively?

As much as I want to blame the refs, Hockey Gords, or everyone on Earth other than the Oilers, the reality is that our boys were the second-best team by a wide margin. The Panthers were the better team in all three zones, and at some point, you just have to tip your cap, don’t you? Edmonton had two opportunities to win a game and ensure the series would go to seven, and it’s baffling how they came up so short both times. All I know for sure is that the Panthers smothered them both times. Florida played about as well defensively as a team possibly can, and it was a puzzle Kris Knoblauch and his staff came nowhere close to solving. If anything, this summer has to be one of finding answers over making excuses, because it’s going to hurt for a long time that we got this close again and somehow took a step backward.

No, it’s not Groundhog Day. It’s just me telling you, once again, that the Oilers looked completely unprepared to counter the Panthers in the first period. The first goal was the product of a grenade pass by Mattias Ekholm to Evan Bouchard, followed by a total lack of positioning on Sam Reinhart. The second goal came in the final minute of a first period that ended with the road team hanging on for dear life, as the Panthers outworked them on every single loose puck on the ice. Florida’s two-goal lead made it a 9-0 run against Edmonton in the first period over the last four games of the series. Of course, things didn’t get much better from there.

In the biggest game of the year, the Oilers got next to nothing done offensively apart from some perimeter shots or drives where rebounds fell safely without a white sweater in sight. I don’t know if they were coached to avoid the front of the net or they simply refused to get there, but there were rebounds to be had throughout the game that no one was there to collect. If those opportunities were at the other end of the rink, you absolutely know there would be at least a Panther or two hacking at the garbage. Florida played playoff hockey, and the Oilers’ attention to detail got worse as the series wore on. At the end of the day, the Panthers deserved to be Stanley Cup champions, and the Oilers get to watch them celebrate for the second year in a row.

It’s painful to watch Mattias Ekholm struggle the way he has in this series. While he’s never been the fastest guy, he’s always been able to rely on his positioning to make sure he’s in the right spot. In the last three games, however, he’s been directly responsible for a handful of goals against by either being out of position or getting caught flat-footed. It’s like he’s an entirely different person. Obviously, we have no idea how hurt he is right now or what he’s trying to play through, but whatever it is makes him look nothing like the Viking conqueror we’ve grown to love.

The question I think a lot of us will be wondering all summer is if having him back in the lineup was the right move after the team looked so steady through the first three rounds without him. When he’s healthy, Mattias Ekholm is better than any of the other defencemen on the roster, but what we watched was a guy who looked far from it. I know there are more players who needed to be better than just Ekholm, but the mistakes he made over the last handful of games stick out for me because of how important we need him to be back there. He wasn’t the rock we needed, and sometimes it’s the biggest shoulders that need to carry the most weight.

It’s tough to single out the goalie when the team in front of him can’t score a goal until the game is long over, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we needed way more from Stuart Skinner than the 20 saves and .870 save percentage we got. I don’t blame him for the first Reinhart goal — that play only happened because of the duffed breakout by Ekholm and Bouchard — but the other two were shots he had to stop. The goal by Matthew Tkachuk literally hit his glove before going in, and the second Reinhart goal happened because he beer-leagued the rebound right to a waiting Panther.

While I know there are plenty of things that go into the opposition scoring goals — Gord knows the defensive structure was piss-poor so often in the SCF — there are times when you need your guy to step up with a save, and we didn’t get nearly enough of them. For the second consecutive playoff run, the Oilers made it to the Stanley Cup Final with their goaltending finishing below .900, and no matter how you slice it, that’s a problem that’s clearly impossible to overcome. I don’t know what the future looks like between the pipes for this organization, but I have a hard time believing we’ll see the same duo back in October.

1. I hate sports. I’ve now watched the Oilers lose in the Stanley Cup Final three times as an adult.

2. Sam Reinhart with the Stanley Cup-winning four-goal game? Why not throw an extra handful of salt in the wound with how the game played out.

3. On a night when we needed the Dynamic Duo to go supernova as they’ve done for us so many times before, they were both held off the scoresheet while producing only two shots between them. The tricky thing I did there, you see, was that Leon Draisaitl didn’t even have a shot attempt. Of all the things I thought could go wrong in Game 6, I didn’t expect the pair of them being this quiet to be near the top of the list. Of course, you have to give the Panthers plenty of credit for the way they smothered those two and gave them next to no ice to play with.

4. I find it curious that neither team got a single power play given some of the shenanigans that were going on out there.

5. The NHL site listed the Oilers with only 10 giveaways, but I’m thinking that number is light by about half.

6. For the final time this season, I must regrettably report that the Oilers won only 47.2% of the faceoffs.

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