SUNRISE, Fla. \u2014 This was supposed to be the year.<\/p>\n
The year the Stanley Cup finally returned to Canada. The year Connor McDavid<\/a> etched his name. The year that wasn\u2019t going to end the way the last year had ended.<\/p>\n Someone delivered that script to the Florida Panthers, didn\u2019t they\u2026?<\/p>\n A pretty good story was denied by an even better team Tuesday in Sunrise, as the Florida Panthers won 5-1 in Game 6 to capture their second consecutive Stanley Cup over the Oilers.<\/p>\n And let there be no doubt: Florida was the better team in this series, from the goalie to the defence corps, from the support players to the superstars.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir forecheck was great, they tilted the rink,\u201d said a sombre, frustrated Connor McDavid. \u201cThey were able to stay on top of us all over the place and we were never really able to generate any momentum up the ice. We kept trying the same thing over and over again, banging our heads against the wall.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have great players. How many guys had 20-plus points in the post-season (six)? They\u2019re as deep as it comes.\u201d<\/p>\n This became a story of a Florida team that plays a style of game the Oilers just couldn\u2019t beat.<\/p>\n The Panthers force the game to the walls on the forecheck and make their opponents play a hard, close-in, battle game to exit the zone, which is their forte. Then they clog the neutral zone, not with a passive trap, but aggressively by always moving and angling.<\/p>\n The rugged Panthers owned the net front real estate at both ends of the rink for the entire series, owned the boards, and in the end, own the Stanley Cup again.<\/p>\n \u201cWe battled, but we’re not leaving here as winners,\u201d said a dejected Leon Draisaitl<\/a>, who had two overtime goals in this series but not a single snipe in regulation time. \u201cThey were better. Just deeper. I mean, their third line scored how many goals (eight)? It wasn’t their top two lines. Their third line did a lot of damage.\u201d<\/p>\n