Panthers rout Oilers in Game 3 of Stanley Cup Final before things get chippy late
There was no close game to worry about, no late comeback, overtime thriller to wait out.
Just simple domination by the Florida Panthers on their home ice that has the potential to flip the Stanley Cup Final fully in their favor.
Florida played its game to a tee and got contributions from throughout the lineup in its 6-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 3 on Monday at Amerant Bank Arena. The Panthers now lead the best-of-7 series 2-1, with Game 4 at 8 p.m. Thursday in Sunrise.
“We just stuck with our game,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We wanted to play a full 60 minutes. We just kept doing that over and over again, and I think we got rewarded by that.”
After the first two games of the series saw the Oilers tie the game in the third period and go to overtime — with Edmonton winning Game 1 4-3 and Florida winning Game 2 5-4 in double overtime — the Panthers took the lead in the opening minute on Monday and never looked back.
Florida got goals from Brad Marchand, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad and Evan Rodrigues while Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 31 of 32 shots he faced — including all 17 at even strength — to stymie Edmonton’s offense.
By the opening minutes of the third period, the Panthers’ onslaught was so strong that Edmonton pulled goaltender Stuart Skinner, who gave up five goals on just 23 shots against.
And by the midway mark of the third period, a full-out brawl ensued after Trent Frederic tried to punch Bennett in the back of the head, missed and then cross-checked him. That set of a slew of skirmishes, with the headliner being Florida’s Jonah Gadjovich dropping the gloves with Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse. A half-dozen players — Florida’s Gadjovich, Bennett and A.J. Greer; Edmonton’s Frederic, Nurse and Mattias Ekholm — were ejected afterward. A seventh in Edmonton’s Evander Kane was sent off a few minutes later after slashing Verhaeghe while Verhaeghe was down on the ice. A few more Edmonton cheap shots and one more ejection followed in the final minutes of the game.
“An unraveling,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said.
But all of this came after the Panthers were in complete control of the game.
Florida went up 1-0 just 56 seconds into regulation with Marchand scoring his fourth goal of the series and eighth of the postseason off a feed from Anton Lundell from behind the left post.
It was the fastest goal ever scored by a Panthers player in the Stanley Cup Final, surpassing Bennett’s mark of 2:07 set in Game 2 on Friday.
At 37 years old, Marchand is the oldest player to score in each of the first three games of a Stanley Cup Final, replacing Frank Mahavolich, who was 35 when he did it in the 1973 Stanley Cup Final for Montreal against the Rangers.
“I don’t know if it set the tempo, but it also feels good when you score early in the game,” Marchand said. “It gives you confidence. You can’t expect that to happen each night. Especially with the way the series has gone so far, one goal doesn’t mean a whole lot, especially with that group, how talented they are, you don’t expect to keep them off the board, right? So it’s just a play in a game, and you have to build off it and move forward. Yeah, it’s definitely nice when you capitalize early. But I think the biggest thing with our group is we just try to carry that momentum shift to shift, and try to build from the shift before us, which we’ve been pretty good at.
Florida then doubled its lead on a Verhaeghe power play goal with 2:15 left in the opening period with a snipe from the left circle on a feed from Evan Rodrigues.
It capped a first period that had eight penalties, similar to Game 2 in Edmonton.
The Oilers cut their deficit to one goal on a Corey Perry power-play goal 1:40 into the second period, but the Panthers would attack in waves from there to rebuild their lead.
Reinhart made it 3-1 three minutes into the second period after Aleksander Barkov forced John Klingberg to turn the puck over near the boards in the Florida zone. Verhaeghe recovered and fed the puck to Reinhart up close.
Bennett then pushed Florida’s lead to 4-1 7:26 into the middle frame on a breakaway after splitting Edmonton’s defense on a feed from Eetu Luostarinen.
And then Ekblad and Rodrigues capped Florida’s scoring with power-play goals in the third period.
This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 11:08 PM.
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