The 2024 Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers begins on Saturday night, and it is a fascinating matchup between two star-powered rosters. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov are going to get most of the headlines going into the series and for good reason.
They are among the best players in the league and the driving forces behind their team’s success. But there are a handful of secondary and complementary players who could swing the series in one direction or another, and it may not always be in a positive direction for their respective team. We are going to take a look at five of those players.
1. Stuart Skinner, Edmonton Oilers
In some ways, Skinner might be the Oilers’ most important player and the one who will dictate whether they lift the Stanley Cup or not. He is the biggest question mark on the roster, their biggest potential Achilles' heel and the one player who could sink an otherwise-dominant team.
Goaltending always changes things in the playoffs, and it's not always for the better. Skinner’s .905 regular-season save percentage ranked 25th out of 54 goalies who appeared in at least 25 games during the regular season, while his postseason save percentage of .897 is seventh out of the nine goalies who have appeared in at least six games. He has also failed to top a .900 save percentage in half of his games (out of 16). They do not need him to be great. They just need him to not be a liability as he has had a tendency to be at times.
2. Sergei Bobrovsky, Florida Panthers
As the other starting goalie in the series, Bobrovsky can also flip things upside down for his team. With two Vezina Trophies and now two Stanley Cup Final appearances on his resume he has already pieced together a borderline Hall of Fame career. A championship could put that over the top for him. But if there has been one issue throughout his career, it has been a sometimes-inconsistent level of play in the postseason.
While he has done his best to change the narrative in recent years, his performance this postseason has been a little up-and-down. The Panthers have been so good in front of him that they have been able to overcome the down moments. But if he hits another cold spell over the next four to seven games, that could be it for the Panthers.
3. Darnell Nurse, Edmonton Oilers
Sometimes the playoffs are not necessarily about a team’s strengths, but their weaknesses that other teams can potentially exploit. For the Oilers, Nurse might be one of those players. He has already been on the ice for 24 goals against this postseason (four more than any other player on the team) while being on for just 12 goals scored. Even worse, the Oilers are consistently buried in their own zone and unable to dictate the pace of play. The Panthers’ high-powered offense and aggressive forecheck might be able to take advantage of his struggles and cause major problems for the Oilers.
4. Carter Verhaeghe, Florida Panthers
So far, we have mostly talked about players that might shift the series in a negative direction. But Verhaeghe is the type of player who might shift in a positive direction for his team. He is not only one of the Panthers’ most productive players, but he's one of the most underrated scorers in the league and has developed a knack for scoring goals in big moments. Over the past three postseasons, he has scored nine game-winning goals in 48 playoff games for the Panthers. Nobody in the NHL has more than six game-winning goals during that stretch.
5. Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton Oilers
While the Oilers’ defensive depth is sometimes an adventure, they do have one outstanding defense pairing they can rely on with Ekholm and Evan Bouchard. Bouchard gets most of the headlines because he scores all the points and helps drive the offense. But Ekholm is the steady defensive hand on that pairing and is one of the Oilers’ best overall defensive players. They are going to need to rely on him at both five-on-five and on the penalty kill (where he plays more than any other player on the roster) to help slow down the Panthers offense. If he can help do that and help insulate Skinner, he could play a bigger role than the stat line might indicate.
