SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Some numbers and notes going into the Stanley Cup Final between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers, a series that starts on Saturday night:
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Edmonton has already played 100 games this season, while Florida has played 99.
And that means a record for season longevity is in play for both teams.
Edmonton’s record for games played in a season is 106, set during its run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2005-06. The Oilers would tie that figure if this series goes six games; they’d break it if it goes the full seven games.
Florida played 104 games in its run to the final in the 1995-96 season. A five-game Cup final this year would tie that mark for the Panthers; they’d set a new club record if this series goes six or seven games.
The NHL record for games played in a season isn’t within reach for either club. That mark is 108, done on six occasions — by the 1992-93 and 2013-14 Los Angeles Kings, the 1993-94 Vancouver Canucks, the 2003-04 Calgary Flames, the 2014-15 Tampa Bay Lightning and the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues.
The Panthers have three players — Sam Reinhart, Eetu Loustarinen and Niko Mikkola — in position to play every game this season. They’re the only Florida players to have appeared in all 82 regular-season contests and all 17 playoff games so far.
The only Oilers player who could play in every Edmonton game this season is defenseman Brett Kulak. Forward Warren Foegele played in all 82 regular-season games but missed three in the West final against Dallas.
Kulak has played in all 228 Oilers games since getting traded to Edmonton in March 2022. Reinhart has played in each of Florida’s last 212 contests.
Edmonton was unbeatable for about a month and a half this season, winning 16 consecutive games from Dec. 21 through Feb. 6 — tying the second-longest regular-season streak in NHL history.
Somehow, that rarely bodes well for championship aspirations.
Excluding the Oilers’ streak this season there have been 12 runs in NHL history where a team won at least 13 consecutive regular-season games.
Of those 12 teams, only one — the 1981-82 New York Islanders, winners of 15 straight that season — went on to win the Stanley Cup. Among the franchises on the list of having such a long streak and not winning it all: the Panthers, who won 13 in a row in 2021-22 but wound up falling in the second round of the playoffs to Tampa Bay.
Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is on pace to lead the NHL in minutes this season, with 4,451 so far — about 128 more than Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner.
Bobrovsky, 35, would be the oldest player to lead the league in goalie minutes over a season since Dominik Hasek, then 37, played 5,326 minutes for Detroit in 2001-02.
Edmonton's Connor McDavid needs one point in this series to reach 1,089 in his career, including playoffs.
That'll tie Glenn Anderson for fourth-most as an Oiler. And that would leave only Wayne Gretzky (1,921), Mark Messier (1,249) and Jari Kurri (1,245) ahead of McDavid on the team’s all-time list.
This is the 45th consecutive Stanley Cup Final that includes a current or former teammate of Jaromir Jagr, counting one instance of Olympic overlap with the Czech national team.
This series actually has nine former Jagr teammates: Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, Sam Bennett, Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sergei Bobrovsky and Dmitry Kulikov, along with Edmonton’s Adam Henrique and Brett Kulak.
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