Previewing the Stanley Cup Finals match-up between Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers

It's been nearly one week of anticipation, but the day has finally arrived. The Edmonton Oilers will play their first Stanley Cup Final game since 2006 this evening. Joining us now is ESPN hockey reporter and analyst Kristen Chilton. Hey Kristen, Hi, how are you? I'm good. I hope you're well. Plenty of nervous energy for these two fan bases that have waited a long time to get their hands on the Cup. We know special teams has been a crucial part of the Oilers playoff run so far. Do you see their success on the power play continuing? Well, the Florida Panthers have a terrific penalty kill and we saw that in full force and during the conference final against the New York Rangers. I mean, the Rangers went into that conference final series as really the best power play team potentially in the entire playoff field. And they were just completely stymied by the Panthers, scored one power play goal in that entire six game series. So it's a big deal for the Panthers to continue that success on the penalty kill as you know that the Oilers are going to be coming with that potent power play and that could be a a real game changer. When you have two pretty evenly matched teams like the Panthers and Oilers are, it can come down to things like the man advantage or how well a team is able to defend short handed. So it really is it could be a real X Factor in this series going forward. And the Oilers will want to set a tone early there with their power play. If they get chances in game one, they're they're going to want to show that this is a really important asset for them and that's part of the reason why they're in the position that they are as having been one of the most dominant playoff teams this season so far. Connor McDavid and Leon Drysidal are arguably the best two players in this series, but experiences on the side of the Panthers, which do you think is more important? Well, you know, it's so tough to say because especially at this time of year, it's not always your stars that end up dictating whether or not a team is successful. A lot of the time it does come down to the depth behind them because when you look at the Panthers, they've got Markov, they've got Matthew Kuchuk, you know, Sam Reinhardt, who just had a 57 goal regular season card over Hagee's had a terrific playoffs so far. But McDavid and Drive Sidle, I mean, those are two of the premier players in the entire league, not just to mention in this series. So if those top players end up neutralizing each other, then it comes down to who are your depth skaters? Who are your guys that are going to really step up to support what those star players want to do if it's not them putting the pucks in the net? Is it going to be Zach Hyman for the Oilers? Is it Ryan Nugent Hopkins? Is it Evander Kane kind of waiting for him to have a big breakout series? Is that what this is going to be? And then on the other side for Florida, Sam Bennett has really come on of late as well. Anton Lindell, they've got some offensive defenseman like in Gus Forsling and Brandon Montour who can also help out in that respect. So definitely McDavid and Drysidler are going to draw a lot of focus. But Alexander Barkov, I mean, he won the Selkie again this season as the best two way forward and he's just so tight defensively. You know that he's going to be matched up against McDavid right off the bat. And if he is able to do his thing against McDavid, then there's going to have to be some definite support there from the rest of the Oilers in order to make sure that they're challenging Sergey Bobrovsky in that. OK, let's talk goaltending then. Florida has been incredible in back-to-back Cup runs. Do you think the Oilers, Stewart Skinner can compete and possibly even steal a game or two? Well, he might have to. And the same could be true of Bobrovsky. I mean, I think that throughout this postseason, Bobrovsky maybe not at his best in the second round against Boston, but definitely made some really critical timely saves against the Rangers in the Eastern Conference final. And he was a big reason why they were able to push past the Rangers the way that they were. And of course, he's nominated for a Beznet for his regular season performance as well. So nothing new there. To see Bobrovsky succeeding. And, you know, he really had to carry the Panthers last year a lot in the postseason. And you could see how he ran out of gas in the cup final. It was really tough to see just how, you know, the the workload caught up to him. But it hasn't been like that this year for Bobrovsky. He's had a much more manageable time. And so we should see him perhaps have a better Cup final showing than he did last year. And when it comes to experience, you know, Stewart Skinner has been through so much already in this postseason. He's been benched, he's been replaced. He's had to refind his game and this is going to be a big moment for him to show that he that, you know, head coach Chris Nowak was right to go back to him and was right to give him another chance here. And it really has been a revelation to see the way that he has performed ever since coming back from those issues that he had. Absolutely. And we spoke to you back in April before the start of the playoffs and you loved the Oilers this year. Do you think this is it? Are they going to finally break the Canadian curse? Well, I think this and I thought it before the playoffs as well, this is Canada's best chance I think to see a Cup come back to a Canadian team. Just because of the way that Edmonton responded to their early struggles, seeing Jay Woodcroft fired in November and no block coming in and just the way that the team surged from there. This seems like the the real opportunity for the Oilers to get Canada back on the the Stanley Cup winning map. Awesome. OK, that's ESPN hockey analyst and reporter Kristen Chilton. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.