How the Panthers have to adjust for Game 2

After the Edmonton Oilers rallied to take Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final from the Florida Panthers by a 4-3 margin in overtime, the Panthers are tasked with finding a way to avoid falling behind 2-0.

If they can achieve that on Friday night in Game 2, they’ll steal home ice and head back to Sunrise with a chance to come one win shy of a repeat as Stanley Cup champions if they take both contests.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and Insider and President of Hockey Content Frank Seravalli were joined by Stephen Whyno to discuss what adjustments Florida can make to counter the all-around dominant nature of the level at which the Oilers are playing.

Frank Seravalli: When you think about how this plays out next, is this more of the same of Florida frustrating the Oilers, or do you think that because the Oilers were able to get a little bit more comfortable and pick through it that there’s some adjustments for Florida to make moving forward?

Stephen Whyno: There’s certainly some adjustments that Paul Maurice is going to make here because the Panthers were not perfect, but they looked suffocating at times in the neutral zone specifically keeping the Oilers from getting their offense going, but once the Oilers were in the offensive zone, they were dominating at times. So I think there’s a lot of defensive zone coverage stuff that I think Paul Maurice is going to look at, and also capitalize on a lot of things that the Panthers did well. There were long stretches in that game where the Panthers had the Oilers hemmed in and Stuart Skinner had to make some big saves just to keep the Oilers from falling out of that game.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…