Quickest Route to Lord Stanley’s Cup? Take the North-South Expressway

The Florida Panthers are putting on a clinic on how to win a Stanley Cup. (Never mind that I picked Edmonton to win.)

Ergo, steamroller the opposition.

Bobby Clarke once described the Flyers’ style thusly. “We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor.”

While not quite as snarly as those Broad Street Bullies squads of yore, Clarke’s quote pretty much describes the Panthers’ style under coach Paul Maurice to a tee.

Fast. Aggressive. Forceful and direct.

Mega-talented as they are, the Oilers are struggling to breach the red line against the swarming Cats, let alone mount any type of sustained attack. On the rare occasions they were able to do so during last night’s 4-3 Game 3 loss, they spent way too much time on the perimeter.

Pretty may dominate the regular season and get you to the playoffs. Pretty doesn’t win once you’re there.

I found myself yelling at no one in particular, on occasions too numerous to count, “Go to the net. That’s where you score.” As if arguably the most skilled hockey team on the planet needed a hack like me to tell them what to do.

Same thing with the Oilers’ power play. Check that…their vaunted power play. The one that had smoked previous foes at an otherworldly 37 percent clip heading into the Final. Yet there they were, shuffling the puck around the perimeter (Connor McDavid) or standing around in familiar spots (Leon Draisaitl), seasoned with an infrequent blast from the point (Evan Bouchard) ticketed more often than not for a penalty killer’s shin guards. With nary a body in front to take away Sergei Bobrovsky’s eyes.

It reminded me of our power play. (Shudder.)

The Oilers didn’t make a game of it until they indirectly heeded my advice. They scored their second goal in large part thanks to veteran Corey Perry, who’d fully occupied Niko Mikkola near the side of the net when the puck bonked in off the unsuspecting Panthers’ defender. Same with the Oilers’ third goal, which deflected in off grinder Ryan McLeod from the slot.

For the record, Perry is the type of down-low battler and net-front presence we so desperately need and rarely employ…at least until Michael Bunting’s arrival. But I digress.

On the flip side, the Panthers are just taking the play to (and the series away from) the Oilers. Fueled by a forecheck as ferocious as it is swarming, they waste absolutely no time screwing around with puck, if you’ll pardon the expression, once they gain possession. They instantly drive to the net, almost always with numbers in support.

They simply overwhelm and exhaust you.

It’s a style reminiscent in many ways of the “organized chaos” approach the Pens employed to capture the Cup in 2016 and to a lesser extent the following year, albeit with a proviso. Infused with board rattling, kamikaze forwards Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk and stout defensemen Mikkola and Aaron Ekblad, the Panthers play with a physical edge up-and-down their lineup our back-to-back champs never possessed. A trait that, IMHO, is a necessary element if you’re to win a Cup in today’s NHL.

For years I’ve been a staunch advocate of adding functional aggression to our lineup. Pleas that have pretty much fallen on deaf ears, especially during the Mike Sullivan era. In particular, I pleaded through the blogosphere for former GM Jim Rutherford to acquire Bennett when he was available.

The Panthers are clearly reaping the benefits of “Playoff Sam’s” hell-for-leather style.