Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch: ‘There’s no silver lining’ to Stanley Cup Final loss

Edmonton Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch didn’t mince words when describing his thoughts following a second straight Stanley Cup Final loss.

Knoblauch has been an NHL coach for two seasons, and he’s been to two Stanley Cup Finals. But after losing the second one, he’s not looking towards the positives.

“There’s no silver lining to this, it’s still heart-wrenching,” Knoblauch said in a media availability an hour after losing 5-1 to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday. “It’s very difficult to handle right now. We were maybe the underdogs going to the LA series, underdogs against Vegas and the Dallas series. It hurts right now, and I don’t think it’s gonna let up for a while.”

The Panthers scored twice in the first period, and once in the second period to put the game away. Vasily Podkolzin would score the lone goal for the Oilers, while Sam Reinhart had the night of his life with four goals.

“So many things have to go your way,” Knoblauch said. “In our first three series’, things went our way. We got timely goals at certain times. Maybe a power play call or a timely save. I don’t think any time during the series we were able to do that.

“And you look at even tonight, I thought we had a good start,” he added. “We make a mistake, and now we’re down 1-0. We had chances to score early. The goal that we got at the end of the game obviously didn’t mean anything. But certainly, we felt like we had the opportunity to get a break like that earlier. And we never got those breaks. And it’s tough. You got to play to get those breaks. But I just felt that a lot of times, just there, we just couldn’t get that puck in the net.”

The Oilers lost in seven games in 2024. So losing in six feels like a step back to Knoblauch.

“It feels farther away,” Knoblauch said when comparing Tuesday’s loss to what happened a year ago. “We went to Game 7 last year. I certainly felt things could have been a lot differently,” Knoblauch said. “We were probably overall healthier last year as a whole, but we had everyone in the lineup. This year, missing (Zach) Hyman was a big hole for us. But yeah, I think it was last year we were a lot closer because we went to Game 7 and that Game 7 was so close.”

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