What to watch for in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final — and which team will win
The first three games of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final saw the Florida Panthers build a 3-0 lead, dominating most aspects of play against the Edmonton Oilers.
Games 4 and 5 were a different story entirely, as the Oilers charged back with two straight wins, with four points in each contest for superstar Connor McDavid.
Will the Cats close it out in Game 6? Or will the series continue to Game 7? Our experts are here to break down all the big questions heading into Friday’s game (8 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN+).
What changed for the Panthers in Games 4 and 5?
Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter: Just an overall lack of consistency. For the majority of the first three games, the Panthers were a metronome. They were a threat to score in every period. Even when their defensive structure had its challenges, they still received consistent goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky in a manner that made up for those miscues.
What’s happening now appears to be a systemic breakdown in a variety of areas. Game 5 reinforced that belief. The Panthers limited the Oilers to just 23 shots, 10 scoring chances and 3 high-danger scoring chances. Those metrics are strong — yet the Panthers allowed four goals, not counting an empty-netter at the end. Again, it’s a lack of consistency or at least a disconnect.
Victoria Matiash, NHL analyst: Aside from the “McDavid factor,” and that Bobrovsky appears more beatable than he has essentially all postseason, earning 11 penalties through two games hasn’t helped. Not only since three of them led to Oilers power-play goals, but also because, as by design, it’s more difficult to score in one’s own favor when down a player — unless you’re on the Oilers: Mattias Janmark did so in Game 4 and Connor Brown tallied one in Game 5.
We can add the latter of those to the list of reasons we’re even discussing a Game 6 back in Edmonton at all. If Brown didn’t open with that shorty five-ish minutes in, I’m not sure the Panthers wouldn’t already be parade-planning.
Arda Öcal, NHL broadcaster: Bobrovsky becoming human and McDavid becoming superhuman. More human than human, even. For Bob, that’s nine goals allowed against in the past two games, with .688 and .826 save percentages, respectively. Bob needs to transform back into the best version of Playoff Bob, like he had been (against McDavid especially) previously in this series.
Kristen Shilton, NHL reporter: Florida’s special teams went from impenetrable to vulnerable in a snap. The Panthers had allowed just two power-play goals in their previous 16 outings going into Game 4 — where Florida gave up three goals on the man advantage and two shorthanded.
Those are back-breaking totals in tightly contested times like these, and it just handed more momentum to the suddenly surging Oilers. Yes, McDavid is otherworldly and Bobrovsky showed he can be average, too. But Florida’s collective downfall was losing those battles they’d been winning handily throughout the postseason.
Greg Wyshynski, NHL reporter: These are all symptoms of the primary problem: The Cup was in the building, twice. The Panthers have sworn up and down that it didn’t matter, but Carter Verhaeghe let the mask slip before Game 5: “It’s a little different with the Cup in the building.”
Paul Maurice framed it — as Paul Maurice does — as the ultimate goal suddenly moving from after the game to being in front of it. Now your friends and family are in a building in Edmonton, waiting to see the Cup. And they’re all in Sunrise, plus all your fans, waiting to see the Cup. Florida’s starts in Games 4 and 5 are absolutely the byproduct of that tension. The Panthers are so much better when the expectations aren’t on them, and they’re punching from underneath. That might be the case in Game 6.
Connor McDavid will score ____ points in Game 6.
Clark: Three points; one goal, two assists.
Matiash: Two. A goal of his own and a power-play assist on Leon Draisaitl‘s first since forever ago (May 29).
Öcal: Three points total.
Shilton: Four points again; one goal, three assists.
Wyshynski: One goal and two assists to move two points behind Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record for points in a single postseason.
If the Panthers win Game 6, who wins the Conn Smythe?
Clark: It’s hard to ignore Connor McDavid for reasons that have everything and nothing to do with McDavid. One of the considerations Conn Smythe voters will likely weigh when it comes to any Panthers player is their consistency over the series. After Game 3, it appeared as if Bobrovsky and Aleksander Barkov were either the top two favorites or among the top three favorites.
Since then, Bobrovsky has struggled to stop shots while Barkov went from scoring four points and being on the ice for zero goals against through the first three games to going pointless while being on the ice for four goals against (2 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded and 1 5-on-5) in the past two games. By comparison, McDavid has had eight points in the past two games and has embodied how the Oilers went from struggling to find a grip to having a firmer grasp going into Game 6.
Matiash: McDavid could wrap up Game 6 minus-five while losing to the Panthers 7-0 and he’s still walking away with it. Hey, this is coming from someone who has been all over Barkov for the award up until recently.
Heading into Game 6, this generation’s Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux has 20 more points than the most productive Panther (Matthew Tkachuk). We’re going to be referencing this performance for years and years.
Öcal: Connor McDavid, and it’s not even close. It’s a playoffs award not a Stanley Cup Final award. But even if it was, No. 97 broke two No. 99 records in the past two games. To ignore one of the greatest individual postseason performances in NHL history would be silly at this point. It’s already McDavid’s award.
Shilton: What is the Conn Smythe? An award for the player most valuable to his team in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Are we even discussing Game 6 probabilities without Connor McDavid? Would Edmonton be in the Cup Final at all if McDavid weren’t having an actual historically productive postseason?
Sergei Bobrovsky deserves all the accolades for what he has given the Panthers; there’s no doubt he has had an MVP-worthy playoffs, too. But, even his stellar run isn’t on par with what McDavid has done.
Wyshynski: The guy I said had an undeniable case to win the Conn Smythe whether or not his team captures the Stanley Cup, and that was before he posted his second straight four-point game.
Unless the voters have this unwavering commitment to the idea that a player from the losing team in the Final can’t win an award for most valuable player of the entire postseason — a rather daft notion, considering it has happened five previous times — then McDavid wins the Conn Smythe even if he doesn’t lift the Cup. He has led his team deep enough to justify it. He has shattered Gretzky’s record for assists in a single postseason and is poised to become the only player other than The Great One in 1987 to have a hand in over 50% of his team’s goals.
Forget the hockey context: This is one of the most dominant individual efforts in sports history. Of course it’s Connor McDavid.
The final score of Game 6 will be ______.
Clark: 4-3, Florida. Generating 26 shots over the final two periods of Game 5, along with the fact they outshot the Oilers 10-4 in the third period, was the most active the Panthers have looked in the past two games. We’ve talked a lot about how finding any sort of breakthrough could be a sign. Maybe this can be that for the Panthers.
And if it’s not? Then, we’re going to be asking if the Oilers are about to pull off the greatest comeback in NHL history, if not the best in the history of North American professional sports.
Matiash: 5-3 Panthers. Florida rides the momentum of what they did right in Game 5. Happy to be wrong here though, as I’m salivating at the thought of a Game 7 on Monday.
Öcal: 4-2, Oilers. Bring on Game 7!
Shilton: 5-4, Florida. The Panthers won’t lose three in a row. Florida was all over Edmonton in the third period of Game 5 (just like the Oilers took it to their opponent in the third frame of Game 3) and it will set a tone for how they start in Game 6. This is the Panthers’ time.
Wyshynski: 4-3 Florida. As noted above, Game 5 felt very much like Game 3 in the sense that one team took the win and the other team took some confidence away in their loss. For about 25 minutes, the Panthers looked like themselves again, and Tkachuk looked like the guy we saw in 2023.
His line with Sam Bennett and Evan Rodrigues will generate multiple goals, Sam Reinhart adds one himself and the power play finally converts. Bobrovsky doesn’t fumble the bag and the Panthers hang on in the final minute to win the Stanley Cup for the first time.
-
David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
The committee has released its second crack at the top 25, and it’s (almost) all Big Ten at the top.
That might seem a bit strange to the conference that boasts the most playoff-caliber teams and the most nonconference wins against other Power 4 leagues, and also has Paul Finebaum there to remind everyone just how angry they should be at this affront to good judgment.
With that, we’ll handle much of Finebaum’s homework for him. Here’s this week’s Anger Index.
1. The SEC
Eleven weeks into the 2024 season, and one thing seems abundantly clear: The SEC is the best conference in college football. Take a look at Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, for example, where nine of the top 17 teams are from the SEC. Or use ESPN’s FPI metric, where the SEC has spots 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9. Consider that the team currently ninth in the SEC standings, South Carolina, has three wins over SP+ top-40 teams and losses to the committee’s No. 10 and 22 teams by a combined total of five points.
Yes, the SEC’s dominance and depth seem obvious.
So, of course, four of the top five teams in the committee’s rankings this week are from the SEC.
Wait, no, sorry about that. We’re getting late word here that, in fact, it’s the Big Ten with teams No. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in this week’s rankings.
It’s not that those four Big Ten teams aren’t any good. Oregon (No. 1) has chewed up and spit out nearly all comers this season. Ohio State (No. 2) is the best squad the gross domestic product of Estonia can buy. Penn State (No. 4), well, the Nittany Lions still haven’t beaten Ohio State, but we assume the rest of the résumé is OK. Indiana (No. 5) is blowing the doors off people.
But that’s it. The rest of the Big Ten is a mess. You need a magnifying glass to find Michigan‘s QB production. Iowa finally learned how to score and somehow has gotten worse. Minnesota looked like the next-best team in the conference, and the Gophers have losses to North Carolina and Rutgers.
A lack of depth does not inherently mean the teams at the top are not elite. Indeed, the other teams in any conference remain independent variables when addressing the ceiling for any one team. If the Kansas City Chiefs joined the Sun Belt, Patrick Mahomes would still be a magician and Andy Reid would still be saying “Bundle-a-rooskie-doo” in your nightmares.
But the cold, hard facts are these: Indiana’s best win came last week against Michigan (No. 40 in SP+) by 3. Penn State’s best win (by SP+) came by 3 against a below-.500 USC team that just benched its QB. Ohio State is absolutely elite on paper, but on the field, the Buckeyes’ success is entirely buoyed by a 20-13 win at Penn State, a team we also know very little about.
The SEC gets flack for boasting of its greatness routinely, and to be sure, that narrative has often bolstered less-than-elite teams. But this year, every reasonable metric suggests the SEC’s production actually matches its ego, and when Ole Miss (No. 11), Georgia (No. 12), Alabama (No. 10) and Texas A&M (No. 15) — all with two losses — are dogged as a result of playing in a league where every other team warrants a spot in the top 25, it undermines the entire point of having a committee that can use its judgment rather than simply look at the standings.
Let’s compare two teams with blind résumés.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 14 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 20, loss came to a top-10 team by 3. Has four wins vs. Power 4 teams with a winning record, by an average of 14 points.
Team B: 8-1 record, No. 11 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 28, loss came to a top-15 team by 15. Has one win vs. a Power 4 team with a winning record, by 3.
So, which team has the better résumé?
This shouldn’t take too long to figure out. Team A looks better by almost every metric, right?
Well, Team A is SMU, who checks in at No. 14 in this week’s ranking.
Team B, though? That’d be the Mustangs’ old friends from the Southwest Conference, the Texas Longhorns. Texas checks in at No. 3.
Perhaps you’ve watched enough of both Texas and SMU to think the eye test favors the Longhorns. That’s fair. But should the eye test account for 11 spots in the rankings? At some point, the results have to matter more.
Or, perhaps it’s the brand that matters to the committee. If that same résumé belonged to a school that hadn’t just bought its way into the Power 4 this year, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t be in the top 10 with ease.
Let’s dig into three different teams still hoping for a playoff bid, even if the odds are against them at this point.
Team A: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 28 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 18 points.
Team B: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 25 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 13 points.
Team C: 7-2, no wins over SP+ top 40. No. 24 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 21 points.
You could split hairs here, but the bottom line is none has a particularly compelling résumé, and they’re all pretty similar.
So, who are they?
Team B is Iowa State, which plummeted from the rankings after losing two straight. But the committee isn’t supposed to care when you lost your games. Losing in September is not better than losing in November. At least that’s what they say.
Team A is Arizona State. Its 10-point loss to Cincinnati came without starting QB Sam Leavitt and was due, at least in part, to a kicking game so traumatic head coach Kenny Dillingham held an open tryout afterward. The Sun Devils and Cyclones are two of three two-loss Power 4 teams unranked this week (alongside Pitt), but unlike Iowa State and Pitt, Arizona State isn’t coming off back-to-back losses. The Sun Devils’ absence seems entirely correlated to the fact that no one believed this team would be any good entering the season, and so few people have looked closely enough to change their minds that the committee feels comfortable ignoring them.
The team the committee can’t ignore, however, is Team C. That would be Colorado. Coach Prime has convinced the world the Buffaloes are for real, even if nothing on their résumé — a No. 77 strength of schedule, worse than 7-2 Western Kentucky‘s — suggests that’s anything close to a certainty.
The Big 12 remains wide open, but it’s to the committee’s detriment that it has so eagerly dismissed two of the better teams just because they’re not as fun to talk about.
Has Missouri played with fire this year? You betcha. Just last week, the Tigers were on the verge of falling to Oklahoma before the Sooners’ woeful QB situation reared its ugly head again and the game ended in a 30-23 Tigers win.
But here’s the thing about playing with fire: So long as you don’t turn your living room into an inferno, it’s actually pretty impressive.
Missouri is 7-2 with wins against SP+ Nos. 26 and 28, and its only losses are to the committee’s No. 10 and No. 15 teams. SP+ has Missouri at No. 17, though we can chalk that up to Connelly’s hometown bias. But No. 23? After a top-10 season in 2023, don’t the Tigers deserve a little benefit of the doubt? They currently trail three three-loss teams (Louisville, South Carolina and LSU) and are behind Boise State, Colorado, Washington State and Clemson, who, combined, have exactly one win over SP+ top-40 teams.
There’s a good chance that, should Brady Cook not return to the lineup, Missouri will get waxed at South Carolina on Saturday, and then the argument is moot. But the committee isn’t supposed to look ahead and take guesses at what it believes might happen (Florida State’s snub last year notwithstanding). It’s supposed to judge based on what’s on the books so far, and putting Missouri this far down the rankings seems more than a tad harsh.
The committee threw a nice bone to the non-Power 4 schools this week, with four teams ranked, including No. 25 Tulane Green Wave. That seems deserved, given Tulane’s recent run. But what is it, exactly, that puts the Green Wave ahead of UNLV?
UNLV has the No. 31 strength of record. Tulane is No. 32.
UNLV has the No. 98 strength of schedule played. Tulane is No. 96.
Tulane has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team. UNLV has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team.
The key difference between the two is UNLV has wins against two Power 4 opponents — Houston and Kansas. Houston, by the way, just knocked off Kansas State, a team that beat Tulane.
So perhaps the committee should spread a bit more love outside the Power 4.
Also Angry: Pittsburgh Panthers (7-2, unranked), Duke Blue Devils (7-3, unranked), Georgia Bulldogs (7-2, No. 12), Utah Utes AD Mark Harlan (the Utes would be ranked if Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark hadn’t rigged the system!) and UConn Huskies (7-3, unranked and thus prohibiting us from Jim Mora Jr. giving a “You wanna talk about playoffs?!?” rant).
-
Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
Oregon remained No. 1 in the second rankings released by the College Football Playoff selection committee on Tuesday night.
The Ducks, who cruised past Maryland 39-18 last week to improve to 10-0, were followed by No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana.
BYU, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Miami, Alabama, Ole Miss and Georgia round out the committee’s top 12.
Miami’s first loss of the season, 28-23 at Georgia Tech, and Georgia’s second defeat, 28-10 at Ole Miss, shook up the committee’s rankings. The Hurricanes fell five spots to No. 9, while the Bulldogs dropped nine spots to No. 12.
Using the current rankings, Oregon (Big Ten), Texas (SEC), BYU (Big 12) and Miami (ACC) would be the four highest-rated conference champions and would receive first-round byes in the 12-team playoff.
Boise State is No. 13 in the committee’s rankings, but the Broncos would be included in the 12-team playoff as the fifth-highest-rated conference champion from the Mountain West.
The first-round matchups would look like this: No. 12 Boise State at No. 5 Ohio State; No. 11 Ole Miss at No. 6 Penn State, No. 10 Alabama at No. 7 Indiana; and No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 8 Tennessee.
Although Georgia, which captured two of the past three CFP national championships, is ranked No. 12 in the committee’s rankings, the Bulldogs would be the first team left out of the 12-team playoff.
SMU is No. 14, followed by Texas A&M, Kansas State, Colorado, Washington State, Louisville and Clemson.
South Carolina, LSU, Missouri, Army and Tulane close out the top 25.
The updated College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings 🏆 pic.twitter.com/ymA9wlI1dB
— ESPN (@espn) November 13, 2024
The Gamecocks and Green Wave made their CFP rankings debuts this season, replacing Iowa State and Pittsburgh, who were Nos. 17 and 18 last week, respectively.
There were nine SEC teams included in the committee’s rankings, four each from the ACC and Big Ten and three from the Big 12.
Georgia, which also fell 41-34 at Alabama on Sept. 28, plays what might be a CFP elimination game against Tennessee at Sanford Stadium on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET/ABC, ESPN+). Georgia is 14-3 after a loss under coach Kirby Smart, bouncing back after each of its previous eight defeats. The Bulldogs haven’t lost back-to-back games in the regular season since 2016, Smart’s first season coaching his alma mater.
Georgia has defeated Tennessee in seven of its past eight contests, including a 38-10 win on the road last season.
Asked about the CFP implications of the game on Monday, Smart said his team had to solely focus on beating the Volunteers.
“I don’t ever take those approaches,” Smart said. “I don’t think they’re the right way to go about things. I think you’re trying to win your conference all the time, and to do that you’ve got to win your games at home. You’ve got to play well on the road, which we have and haven’t. We’ve done both, but I like making it about who we play and how we play, and less about just outcomes.”
BYU survived a 22-21 scare at Utah last week. With Miami’s loss, the Cougars jumped the Hurricane as the third-highest-rated conference champion. BYU hosts Kansas on Saturday, followed by a road game at Arizona State on Nov. 23 and home game against Houston the next week. According to ESPN Analytics, BYU is the heavy favorite (92%) to earn a spot in the Big 12 title game and also win it (40%).
Army would be the next-highest-rated conference champion behind Boise State, one spot ahead of fellow AAC program Tulane. The Black Knights improved to 9-0 with last week’s 14-3 victory at North Texas. They’ll have their best chance to make a statement to the selection committee in their next game, against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium in New York on Nov. 23.
The four first-round games will be played at the home campus of the higher-seeded teams on Dec. 20 and 21. The four quarterfinal games will be staged at the VRBO Fiesta Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl presented by Prudential and Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
The two semifinal games will take place at the Capital One Orange Bowl and Goodyear Cotton Bowl on Jan. 9 and 10.
The CFP National Championship presented by AT&T is scheduled for Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway