With the 2025 Stanely Cup finals now less than a month away, predictions for the winner are starting to hold more weight. However, things have been up and down this series, and though the Florida Panthers bagged the prize last year, they didn’t begin this playoff series looking as good as they do now (meaning, that based on the last few wide margin wins against the Carolina Hurricanes, they’re looking really good). They’re now going to be facing off the Hurricanes in a game 4 elimination game on their home turf; so yes things are looking up! Now, not so very surprisingly… Things are also looking pretty good for the Edmonton Oilers.

They’ve won the last two consecutive games against the Dallas Stars, and have the added benefit of one of their rivals’ top forwards Roope Hintz being potentially injured and out of the roster for game 4. Good, but not necessarily as good as Florida according to a recent pie chart put together by the statistical wizards at Money Puck.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes, it’s looking like it will definitely be the Panthers vs. probably the Oilers for the 2025 Stanley Cup, a repeat of the 2024 pairing. The Stars have a fair chance of making the final too, that shouldn’t be discounted. In fact, Star’s coach Peter Deboer didn’t seem to think game 3 went too badly, saying, despite the loss, “But I thought our guys, I give our guys credit. They didn’t mail it in, they showed up and worked.”If the stats are on the puck, the most likely matchup is the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers—a rematch of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final—with MoneyPuck assigning them a combined 64 % (their highest-probability Final pairing) chance to face off in the Final.

If the stats are right, could it be the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers repeating a 2024 tie breaker in the 2025 playoffs?

So, in 2024, things were also looking great for the Florida Panthers (truth be told they’ve been looking pretty good for Florida ever since Bill Zito was named GM and they made the playoffs every year that followed), they won the first three games against the Oilers, until…the turn around!

In game 4, everything changed. The Edmonton Oilers won 8-1, with both Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scoring for the first time in the series. Connor McDavid even scored his 32nd assist during this game, thereby breaking Gretzky’s record of the most assists during a playoff run. Things got so bad, that Florida’s ‘wall’ Sergei Bobrovsky had to be pulled from between the goals after he let the fifth goal through. But sure, it was allowed, Florida had been on a winning streak and maybe giving this game was a wise call in the long run, right?

Wrong, Florida went on to lose the next two games and the series was pushed into a 7th game final. Things got so crazy that Florida coach Paul Maurice didn’t seem his usual calm self when answering a question about the potential of game 7 by saying rather too diplomatically, “Game 7, Stanley Cup Final, it is set for every young man’s dreams. Nobody ever dreamt about a Game 4 overtime winner. It’s always Game 7.” Sure, in retrospect, why not, but Florida might’ve been quite happy with that five game win against the Edmonton Oilers.

Now, as the two teams look to make it to the 2025 final, one can only hope history will play out again for a nail biting repeat of 2024!