Draisaitl’s defense, Robertson’s struggles, and the biggest storylines to watch in the conference final

Anthony Trudeau
Anthony Trudeau(atrud00)
May 20, 2025, 14:30 EDT
Draisaitl’s defense, Robertson’s struggles, and the biggest storylines to watch in the conference final
Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

After a wild first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs was a heck of an opening salvo, the conference semifinals round separated the chaff from the wheat.

None of the losing teams- the Vegas Golden Knights, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets, and Toronto Maple Leafs– ever looked like legitimate Cup contenders. All but one victor jumped out to a commanding 3-1 lead, and though the Florida Panthers needed a seventh game to dispatch the Maple Leafs, Toronto fans can tell you how close that series was.

We’re down to the best of the best, which means a pair of excellent teams are going on vacation in two weeks. Who they’ll be is anyone’s guess: The Panthers blew away the Maple Leafs in their own barn, the Carolina Hurricanes have yet to break a sweat through two rounds, the Edmonton Oilers made Vegas look ordinary, and the Dallas Stars’ Mikko Rantanen gambit is aging like fine wine.

With so little to separate the clubs, every storyline is extra consequential ahead of round three, including the Panthers’ newest star, the Dallas sniper who’s struggling to find his footing, and all four possible Stanley Cup matchups. Read on for more of the plot threads that will define the Stanley Cup home stretch.

What’s the best Cup matchup? All of them

The 2023 Stanley Cup Final garnered some buzz around it thanks to Matthew Tkachuk and Sergei Bobrovsky’s heroics in the preceding rounds, but the action on the ice wasn’t particularly memorable. The stacked Golden Knights made quick work of the worn-out Cats. The pendulum swung the other way in 2024 when the powerhouse Panthers collided with an Oilers team led by Connor McDavid, the best player in the world. Their battle was an emotional roller coaster, as McDavid led the Oilers to Game 7 from a 3-0 series deficit only to come up just short against Florida’s smothering defense.

The 2025 Stanley Cup Final could well join the 2024 edition in the “instant classic” category. An Oilers-Panthers rematch would be just fine with neutrals who watched their epic battle last season. Given McDavid and Tkachuk’s stature on Team Canada and Team USA, respectively, the matchup would have some added geopolitical intrigue this time around. If the Stars steal the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl from the Oilers, the incumbent champs will once again have to stop the league’s hottest player, this time Dallas’ Mikko Rantanen.

The fun won’t stop if the Carolina Hurricanes manage to upset the Panthers, either. The Canes punted Rantanen back to the Western Conference after a marriage so short and tumultuous it’d make Zsa Zsa Gabor blush. If they win bragging rights from the trade along with a second Stanley Cup, neither Rantanen nor the rest of us will ever hear the end of it.

A cross-continent matchup between the star-studded Oilers and the scrappy, unheralded Hurricanes, meanwhile, is a readymade clash of styles. The franchises previously met in the 2006 final, when Carolina plunged Edmonton into a decade of darkness.

Anton Lundell is Florida’s next star

The lasting image of the Panthers’ come-from-behind series victory over Toronto was of Brad Marchand. Of course it was. It was Marchand, not Tkachuk or Sasha Barkov, who took the Leafs’ heart with eight points, including the Game 3 overtime winner. The hockey gods transported the Rat from beyond the grave of the Boston Bruins’ contention window to torment the Maple Leafs one last time. His knowing sneer after Game 5, when the Panthers embarrassed the Leafs by a score of 6-1 on Toronto ice, perfectly summarized his relationship with that city over the past 15 years. 

The future Hall-of-Famer is the public face of Florida’s excellent third line for obvious reasons, but they already had a good thing going before he hopped on board in March. That’s because Anton Lundell, like so many Panthers during this golden era, turns it up to 11 in the playoffs. The 23-year-old scored 17 points last postseason when Vladimir Tarasenko was in Marchand’s spot opposite countryman Eetu Luostarinen. His hands and defensive acumen make the “Baby Barkov” nickname more than just an obvious joke.

Lundell is still dominating possession and dishing out assists, but he’s also planting his 200-lb frame down low to score greasy goals. His 17 regular-season tallies were a career high, as are his four playoff markers. Lundell will almost certainly take the second-line center baton from pending UFA Bennett in the offseason, but his depth role is part of what made him so dangerous in the first two rounds. He, Marchand, and Luostarinen have feasted on overmatched bottom-six opponents like Steven Lorentz and Gage Goncalves. Lundell is the beating heart of an elite third unit that could throw a monkey wrench into Carolina’s four-line M.O.

The Dallas Stars need more from their ‘other’ star, Jason Robertson

When the Stars went out and got Rantanen, they were confident that adding a top-15 player as the crown jewel of their usually balanced attack would be enough to send them over the top. Rantanen’s tear makes it easy to forget that Dallas came within two wins of the Stanley Cup Final in each of the past two seasons with Jason Robertson, a big winger with a wicked shot, as the focal point of their offense. 

Robertson has never put together the sort of run Rantanen, one of the most accomplished playoff performers in recent history, is on currently, but few players have. He did post respectable totals (13 G, 34 P in 39 GP) in the pair of long playoff runs that saw Dallas come up just short in the Western Conference Final. He’s not a choke artist, in other words, so why did the American struggle so badly to make a dent against Winnipeg (1 A in 6 GP) as Rantanen’s line with Mikael Granlund and longtime Robertson collaborator Roope Hintz flourished?

For starters, Robertson hasn’t looked right since missing the first round with a knee injury. He averaged under 15 minutes of ice time against the Jets, and it didn’t help that an 11-7 lineup configuration kept him and Wyatt Johnston without a consistent linemate from Game 4 on.

Veteran Evgenii Dadonov could slot onto their right wing going forward, but Robertson needs to step up regardless. The 25-year-old’s 46-goal season in 2022-23 saw him named fourth runner-up for the Hart Trophy, and though he’s leveled off as more of an 80-point guy since then, having him as Rantanen’s lieutenant on the second line should provide Dallas with championship-level depth. So far, it hasn’t.

Underestimate the Carolina Hurricanes at your peril

Every season, Rod Brind’Amour’s Hurricanes bowl over some unexpecting Metropolitan Division bottom feeder in the first round, overwhelming them with their unmatched fitness and team-wide commitment to forechecking. In the absence of superstar talent, that formula then peters out against an opponent either too tough or too skilled for the gap in effort and shot attempts to matter. Is this the season that changes, the season the Hurricanes ride their combination of skill and will across the finish line?

It looked like it against the No. 1 seed, the Washington Capitals. I wrote that the Caps’ tough forecheck would overwhelm a shaky Canes’ blue line, words I instantly wanted back once it became abundantly clear that it was Washington’s defensemen who weren’t ready for the fight. Carolina ground them into a paste in a thoroughly uncompetitive five-game stand, outskating, outworking, and outplaying the Capitals at every turn. 

Sean Walker was excellent on the blue line (3P, +5, 20:42 ATOI from Game 3 on), Frederik Andersen was invincible in goal (1.20 GAA vs. WAS), and Brind’Amour finally caved and stacked his three best forwards on a monster first line. It worked, as Seth Jarvis, Sebastian Aho, and Andrei Svechnikov smashed through Washington for three even-strength goals (and none against) in three games as a unit. That will be much more difficult against Florida and the vaunted Barkov line, but is anyone better equipped to deal with the champs’ rough stuff and two-way game than the unflappable Canes? It would be a massive upset, but only because Carolina is perpetually underestimated.

Leon Draisaitl: Matchup center

When Leon Draisaitl tipped Reilly Smith’s pass to no one in particular into his own net to hand the Vegas Golden Knights a 4-3 win in Game 3 of their matchup with Edmonton, he gave the Oilers’ mad scientist coach Kris Knoblauch an excuse to try something new. Knoblauch had watched Knights’ star center Jack Eichel dictate the pace against Connor McDavid at even strength over the first two games.

Though McDavid burned Eichel to set up the Game 2 OT winner, the Knights outchanced the Oilers 20-7 during their matchups at 5-on-5. After a fluky loss, Knoblauch was no longer content with keeping things status quo. He was going to do something about Eichel.

Options were limited. Adam Henrique’s footspeed is long gone, and Eichel would have toasted him in the neutral zone. Mattias Janmark moves well, but he’s not a natural center. Instead of trying a bottom-six pivot against the Eichel line, Knoblauch plucked Rocket Richard winner Draisaitl off McDavid’s wing to sic him on the former Sabres’ captain. Draisaitl, perhaps bored of being one of the two or three most unstoppable offensive forces in hockey, has utilized his size, speed, and faceoff acumen to clean up his two-way game over the past year. Against Vegas, it showed.

Between scrappy forecheckers Vasily Podkolzin and Kasperi Kapanen, the German kept Eichel off the scoresheet for the first time in the series in Game 4 before handing him a -1 on Kapanen’s series winner in Game 5. “Not too often [that] Rocket Richard trophy winners, Hart Trophy winners take a challenge of a shutdown role,” Knoblauch said after Game 4. “[Draisaitl] bought into that.” He has to buy into it again when the Oilers fly to Dallas for Game 1. If he can silence Rantanen and Hintz like he did Eichel and Mark Stone, the Stars, who have struggled to find secondary scoring, are in deep trouble.

SPONSORED BY bet365

Keep scrolling for more content!