The Edmonton Oilers weren’t able to build off their Game 1 overtime victory over the Florida Panthers in the 2025 Stanley Cup Final, dropping a 5-4 decision on Friday night in double overtime thanks to a pair of goals from Florida’s Brad Marchand.
Marchand, who scored shorthanded earlier in the game, added his third tally of the Stanley Cup Final near the midway point of the second overtime, deadlocking the series at 1-1.
Oilers forward Evander Kane, who scored in Game 2, believes that there’s a silver lining for Edmonton despite the disappointing double overtime loss, as he explained to TSN’s Ryan Rishaug on Monday morning.
“We’re not down 0-3, that’s a good start,” he said. “We’re coming in tied 1-1 and knowing we need to have Game 3. I think we have a much higher sense of what we need to do, I think our confidence level is higher, I think we’re a lot more comfortable obviously having the experience from last year. Hopefully that leads to some success.”
Since joining the Oilers in January of 2022, Kane has become one of Edmonton’s more clutch postseason performers. He would score 13 postseason goals for Edmonton in the 2022 postseason as they advanced to the Western Conference Final for the first time since 2006, and was soon rewarded with a four-year contract extension to stick around.
He missed the entire 2024-25 regular season while recovering from offseason surgery, but has scored six goals with six assists in 17 postseason games so far this spring.
Evander Kane speaks on physicality between Oilers and Panthers
As far as the physicality in the series so far, Kane said it reminded him of the epic seven-game battle against the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs when he was playing with the San Jose Sharks.
“Probably the closest series that it reminds me of is when I was in San Jose against Vegas in the first round in 2019, that was probably one of the more physical series,” he said. “I think it was expected, coming into this series here in the Cup Final and with the way that Florida plays and the way we’ve been playing throughout the playoffs, it was just a matter of time.”
Game 3 between the Oilers and Panthers will begin shortly after 8:00 p.m. ET on Monday evening.
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