Florida Panthers win the 2024 Stanley Cup with 2-1 victory over Edmonton Oilers

Scott Maxwell
Scott Maxwell
Florida Panthers pose with Stanley Cup
Credit: Jim Rassol-USA TODAY Sports

The Florida Panthers have won the 2024 Stanley Cup after a 2-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

With the win, the Panthers secure their first Stanley Cup since the inception of their franchise in 1993. They had made it to the Cup Final twice before in 1996 and last season in 2023.

The victory came after blowing a 3-0 series lead to the Oilers, but they managed to get the win on their fourth attempt to secure the Cup and avoid the reverse sweep.

This now marks the second consecutive time that the Oilers have lost in the Final, having also done so in seven games to the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006. Those have been their only two trips to the Final since winning five Cups in seven years from 1984 to 1990.

It didn’t take long for the action to get started. After an early power play for the Panthers, it didn’t quite turn into the momentum drainer when they didn’t convert like it had in the past for Florida, as six seconds later, Evan Rodrigues threw the puck on net and Carter Verhaeghe deflected it past Stuart Skinner. That gave the Panthers the lead in the game, but also their first lead since their Game 3 win.

But the Oilers responded quickly, as 2:17 later, Cody Ceci made an excellent breakout pass to spring Mattias Janmark on the breakaway, and the game was already tied up at 1-1, a score that held for the rest of the period.

In fact, for most of the second period, it was still 1-1. With less than five minutes left, the Oilers got a great chance to take the lead when Warren Foegele‘s shot trickled through the crease, but it was cleared by Dimitry Kulikov. To make matters worse, the Panthers took it the other way and Sam Reinhart had all the time in the world to make the perfect shot to make it 2-1.

It was crunch time for the Oilers in the third, as they were in desperate need of another goal to tie it. They pressed for another one, even coming oh-so close to doing so with seven minutes to go on a couple of chances from Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman.

But that was all they could muster up. Despite a plethora of chances in the third and mostly hemming the Panthers in their own zone, they seemed to get more and more tired as the period went along, and couldn’t get the tying goal, giving the Panthers the 2-1 win.

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