It was an uncharacteristic game for the Edmonton Oilers. They’re the oldest team in the league with an average player age of 30 and 1,657 collective National Hockey League playoff games of experience – 15 per cent more than their Stanley Cup opponent the Florida Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champion with an average age of 29 (eight oldest) who together have logged 1,412 of them – so you’d think they’d know better than to overreact and stray from the usual ‘stay at even keel, not-too-high-not-too-low’ ideal. And yet those were the wily Oilers veterans in the midst of a line brawl halfway through the third period of Game 3, the score at the time 5-1 in favour of the Panthers and three of the five players effectively getting tossed from the contest with misconduct penalties as a result. Oilers star Leon Draisaitl said Tuesday after practice he doesn’t take much issue with his teammates getting into the rough stuff, especially at that point of the game when the eventual 6-1 result was all but final, but adds the team could “be a little bit more disciplined and stay away from that, but there’s also times where we’ve handled it.” “Last night was the first night where it got out of hand a little bit,” Draisaitl told reporters. “The game’s over. It’s 5-1. It’s not a big deal. We have guys that are intense. They like getting in those situations just as much as they do.” But in all, the Oilers collected 85 minutes worth of penalties in the game and gave the host Panthers 11 power-play chances, in which they scored on three. That’s a lot of punishment for an Oilers team that wasn’t known for its physical play coming into the 2025 playoffs. And playing shorthanded for 15:25 of the game, so 25 per cent of it, dampens the Oilers’ ability to do what they’ve been doing the best all playoffs: score at even strength. “We’ve got to strive for a tight-checking game, not a lot of power plays going their way,” Draisaitl said. “Defending well, low event – that’s what we’re looking to do. That’s what we’ve done throughout most of the playoffs. That’s our first step.” Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm said a plus for his team is all that experience because they’ve learned by now – whether with Edmonton or elsewhere – that they shouldn’t think too far ahead or dwell on what’s already happened. “Having all that experience on our side is also huge in situations like this, where you’ve got to go game by game (and) go day by day, and make sure you don’t let that flow into each other too much,” he said. “We knew before the series was going it’s going to be hard.” The Oilers have been showing that kind of post-season resolve the last four seasons, stretching back to 2022 when they advanced to the Western Conference final for the first time in recent years. Right at the beginning of this season’s playoffs, the Oilers had to bounce back from two high-event losses to the Los Angeles Kings and did so. Echoing Draisaitl and his head coach Kris Knoblauch, who also said Tuesday the Oilers need to get back to playing a game “that’s with the puck, good defensive hockey,” Ekholm said being familiar with the playoff Panthers should be helpful. “We’ve won four games against them in these finals the last two years,” he said. “You look at those games, we’re a very focused group. We play our game. We don’t let that even creep in a little bit. “Maybe we lost that a little bit last night, but we know what to do.”
