The Questions, Quotes, and Players That’ll Define the 2024 NHL Conference Finals

Is this finally Connor McDavid’s year? Can the Rangers keep getting away with this? Is Jake Oettinger stout enough to keep Dallas going? And can Paul Maurice cuss Florida to victory? That and more in our conference finals preview.

When the 2024 NHL conference finals begin on Wednesday night, one thing, and pretty much only one thing, can be said with absolute certainty: This year, the Stanley Cup will go to a team that hasn’t won the big one in what might as well be forever.

Of the four remaining semifinalists—the Dallas Stars, Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers, and Florida Panthers—zero have reached sweet, sweet hockey glory at any point during this third millennium anno Domini. Instead, the teams’ active Cup droughts span from “the past quarter century” at best (the Stars’ controversial triple-OT goal from Brett Hull in 1999 caused leaguewide rule changes and imposed a still extant psychic burden on the Buffalo Sabres) to “since 1990” at the longest (sorry, OiLOLers!) to “since forever and/or never” at the most existential (the Florida Panthers have yet to win it all in their three-decade lifetime).

But in the coming weeks, one of these teams will rack up eight wins and in doing so reset that “days since ultimate supremacy” counter back to zero. Gloves and sticks will be thrown, monkeys on backs will be shed, and, as they used to say, history will be made.

Maybe New York goalie Igor Shesterkin will add that one line item to his résumé that his predecessor Henrik Lundqvist never had. Or Edmonton’s Connor McDavid will confirm his generational reputation as the ultimate rising tide of a teammate. Or the Florida Panthers, once a franchise that struggled to give away tickets, will rake in all the marbles as the sun rises in Sunrise. (Fun game: Imagine the wonder of Matthew Tkachuk’s day with the Cup.) Or the Dallas Stars will ensure that at least one of those former San Jose Sharks (and future Hockey Hall of Famers) named Joe can have his name engraved on the Cup.

Out on the ice, hockey looks like it happens lightning fast: quick pivots, head on a swivel, the flashing of leather, the smashing of bods. But for all of its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, the sport is quietly about the long game: the slog, the Sturm und Drang, the tugging impulses toward savvy flexibility or stubborn persistence. On the one hand, the road to a title feels interminable. On the other, it’s at least somewhat familiar for all four of these teams.

The dogged, underdoggy Stars have reached the Stanley Cup Final once and the Western Conference final three times in the past five seasons. The nigh-unsinkable New York Rangers and the still-revvin’-up Edmonton Oilers were two of the last four teams standing only two years ago. (This April, the Rangers earned the Presidents’ Trophy for having the best record in the league.) The Florida Panthers have a chance to appear in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. Everyone, in other words, has a strong argument for still being here, which is why anything and everything can still happen. Here’s our look at who’s left playing and what we expect the outcome to be in these series.

Back East: New York Rangers Vs. Florida Panthers

The Gist

Last spring, a high-octane team based in a hot-weather, nontraditional hockey market and led by a prolific, drafted-second star hoisted the Stanley Cup, just as the hockey gods foretold! Unfortunately for fans of Aleksander Barkov and his Florida Panthers, it was Jack Eichel and the Las Vegas Golden Knights who did all that.

The Panthers, meanwhile, have been to a Cup Final twice—that rat-tastic 1996 run three years after the team’s formation in expansion, and also last June, against Vegas—but have never been the champion. They are hell-bent on getting the chance to try again. In a first-round battle for the state of Florida, the Panthers rolled their lines and their eyes at the two-thousand-and-late Tampa Bay Lightning, winning the series in five games. In a second-round rematch against Boston, Florida beat the Bruins at their own sicko game in a six-bout slugfest characterized by lead changes, back-to-back-to-back goals, and proudly rude on-ice behavior (licking and diving gestures, obv).

Led spiritually by the charismatic and productive needler Tkachuk, and quantitatively by the power-play lord Sam Reinhart, the two-way king Barkov, and defenseman Aaron Ekblad, the Panthers have both flash and the fundamentals, both experience and egregiousness. And halfway through these playoffs, you could describe their next opponent, the New York Rangers, in much the same way.

More than any other team at the moment, the Rangers have the most dangerous of qualities: the ineffable feeling of something special and how do they keep getting away with this? Like all momentum-based phenomena, this Rangers run feels euphoric both in spite of and because of the likelihood that it cannot last. Unless …

Unless Shesterkin keeps making the big stops that turned him into one of the NHL’s best goalies in the second half of this season. Unless the people’s captain Chris Kreider parks himself in the slot again and again, driving all the other goalies bananas. Unless former Panther Vincent Trocheck continues his team-leading playoff production. Unless New York’s top talent keeps contributing and its special teams keep rolling.

“We’re playing the best team in the league,” said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour after his team was knocked out by the Rangers in the second round. Now, New York will try to keep on playing as if that is the truth.

The Big Questions

Can Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky frustrate the Rangers playmakers? Which Sam will be more valuable for the Panthers: the playmaking Reinhart or the pest extraordinaire Bennett? Will the Panthers continue to excel at getting their opponents to snap at their expertly tied-on bait? Who will reign in the all-important matchup between Rangers defenseman Adam Fox and his health? What percentage of the Florida arena will be made up of Rangers fans, for whom it is arguably cheaper to travel to a road game than to try to get into Madison Square Garden?

And the biggest question, not only of this series but of these playoffs in general, is: What’s the deal with the Rangers? Writing for The Athletic, quantitative analyst Dom Luszczsyszyn noted that both Carolina and Florida were “two teams the model simply holds in higher esteem” than the Rangers. New York had the league’s best record this season, but it was analytically middling under the hood when playing five-on-five. In the playoffs, though, their reliance on the power play hasn’t been a weakness—it’s been a puzzle that opponents can’t solve.

New York may have caught a break by drawing the waning Washington Capitals in the first round, but it also did something that can’t be taken for granted: It beat a lesser team handily and efficiently. Then, in the next round, it won two overtime games to take a 3-0 series lead against a not-lesser Carolina Panthers team that was supposed to show up and show the Rangers what was what. Is all this a repudiation of the very tenets of math and science and statistics? Is it a freak fluke that is about to be exposed?

Don’t ask me: Ask the Panthers’ coach, Paul Maurice. Earlier this season, he remarked: “I only use analytics when it serves my purpose.” This guy gets it.

The Representative Tunes

It’s on the nose, I know, but look: The lyrics “You can beat the heat if you beat the charges too / They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true” from Taylor Swift (ft. Florence and the Machine)’s “Florida!!!” don’t NOT describe how Bennett got off pretty much scot-free after Brad Marchand’s mug got in the way of his gloved fist. (Bennett would go on to score the tying goal in Game 4 as Marchand was sidelined by injury.)

And how about the Rangers? This is a tough one. I was going to go with “The Boys Are Back in Town” to nod at (a) the team’s hard-won home advantage and (b) the fact that decorating a player’s bucolic front yard with celebratory hats is an extremely “plays TBABiT on repeat on the jukebox every Wednesday night with the fellas”–coded thing to do.

But instead, I’ll point you toward Matthew Perpetua’s spring-of-1994-themed playlist, which I’ve been listening to nonstop while writing this. Sure, the briefly vivid fever dream of nostalgic ’90s déjà vu in Midtown Manhattan may be fading away, what with the Knicks having staggered as far as a Thibs team possibly could and the Canucks foreclosing the opportunity for an old pearl anniversary Cup rematch. (Would Pavel Bure be … JT Miller?! Much to consider.) But that doesn’t mean it’s gone, not when we still have Kreider out there Messiering three goals in less than nine minutes to close out Round 2 and keep the hope of the mid-’90s alive. Selling the drama, indeed!

The Representative Quote

“Plays with a lot of grit and edge, gets under your skin, just mean. I can’t say enough good things about him. I was a Calgary kid and he played for Calgary, so it was a lot of fun watching him. When he left, it broke my heart a little bit.” —Rangers goof/goon Matt Rempe on Tkachuk; game recognize game.

The Representative Players

The Panthers’ Gustav Forsling is in many ways the median (complimentary!) Florida Panther: a strapping young lad who largely flies under the radar, has gone “from the scrap heap to the top of the heap,” is an effective part of a skilled defensive corps (playing alongside lifelong Panther Ekblad), is a plus-minus sensation, and likes fishing in peace and quiet. On the Rangers’ end of the ice, Mika Zibanejad’s turnaround in production after a midseason swoon is indicative of the way New York has calmly handled its business and done what it’s needed to do this season.

The Best Players Who Need to Be the Best Players

After a few playoff campaigns in which he was accused of underperforming on the stat sheets, Rangers forward (and Larry David–approved) Artemi “Breadman” Panarin has been his regular-season kind of self this spring, with 11 points in 10 playoff games. (Last year, it was two points in the span of seven games.) And for the Panthers, Barkov has stepped up when it counts:

Coaches Corner

Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette has coached six different franchises into the postseason and gotten to the Cup Final with three of them, winning it all with Carolina once back in 2006. But while some of his words of wisdom were recently enshrined on a strange spirit towel, let’s be honest: It’s the guy on the other bench whose thoughts are more embroidery worthy on a day-to-day basis.

During Game 5 against Boston, for example, Maurice chewed out his team, who responded by scoring a goal seconds later. Maurice reflected on the moment after the game: “I just thought they needed some profanity in their life, and I brought some,” he said. “I don’t excel at a lot of things in life, but fuck me, am I good at that.”

The Outcome

After last year, the Panthers know what it takes and how it feels to reach a Cup Final, and their ability to be back on the cusp one year later is a testament to their focus and drive. But the Rangers are similarly aware of the stakes. For the first time in these playoffs, the Rangers will host a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. And unlike those Knicks, they’ll win it.

Out West: Edmonton Oilers Vs. Dallas Stars

The Gist

The last time the Stars played the Oilers, on April 3, Dallas had an auspicious night: 10 different Stars players recorded points in a 5-0 shutout, earning them a franchise-record eighth win in a row. The victory was a testament to the enviable roster of skaters Dallas has this season, one that balances the veteran presence of late-career stars who first rose to prominence elsewhere (Joe Pavelski, Tyler Seguin, Ryan Suter, Matt Duchene) with the homegrown contributions of players like Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston, and Miro Heiskanen.

On the one hand, no Dallas player recorded more than 80 points this year. (The Oilers, in contrast, had McDavid and Leon Draisaitl finishing with 132 and 106!) But the Stars had 10 different guys who finished with upward of 47 points. (For Edmonton, the number was half that.) And while goalie Jake Oettinger’s season wasn’t on par with some of his prior campaigns, he finished the year on a tear, putting up a .930 save percentage in his final dozen games and losing just twice.

Dallas lost the first two games of the playoffs at home against the defending champion Knights before climbing back to avenge last season and take the series in seven. And that earned the Stars a second-round matchup with another recent Cup-winning team, the Colorado Avalanche, who were eager to bounce back from an early playoff exit last season. But Duchene’s double-OT Game 6 goal for the Stars put an end to Nathan MacKinnon and Co.’s hopes (and Zach Parise’s Bourquian quest) while serving as one more reminder that the Stars ought not be overlooked.

The Oilers, meanwhile, are very rarely overlooked: They’re perhaps one of the most scrutinized teams in the league, year in and year out. But unlike their eastern Canada under-the-microscope counterparts (the disappointing as hell and as ever Toronto Maple Leafs), Edmonton has found ways to rise above the drama and take a big step.

After a dismal start to the season, the Oilers slowly climbed their way back into contention. McDavid finished the year with 32 goals and 100 assists, despite late-season injury concerns. No big deal. So far, the four leading scorers in the NHL playoffs are all Oilers. Not only is the team’s power play overwhelming, but their penalty kill is exasperating for opponents. Yet Edmonton will have its work cut out for it with the Stars. “You need everybody playing,” said defenseman Evan Bouchard, “everybody pulling the same rope.” The Oilers’ biggest hope may be that the series turns into that much of a tug-of-war.

The Big Questions

Can Dallas continue to spread the wealth with its depth (and constantly shifting line combinations) in five-on-five scoring? Can trade deadline acquisition Chris Tanev help slow down the Oilers’ top threats (the way he did against Eichel and MacKinnon) and take some of the pressure off other blueliners like Heiskanen? Will Roope Hintz, who scored 65 points for the Stars this season and had six in the playoffs before being sidelined, be back from injury soon?

For Edmonton, it’s no secret that when you have guys like McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice, you’re always a threat to score. But what about on the other end of the ice? Of the four teams remaining in the playoffs, the Oilers have the murkiest goaltending situation: Netminder Stuart Skinner was benched for a couple of games last round before regaining his form. Will that be a blip, or is it a harbinger?

The Representative Tunes

Broke: When the widest a man has ever smiled is because of Nickelback.

Woke: Playing “La Bamba” to celebrate Oilers wins for wholesome reasons.

Bespoke: This custom version of “La Bamba” written for the Oilers by … Edmonton Opera folks … ?

(Good joke: This reaction out of Vancouver.)

Anyway, with both the Dallas Stars and the Mavericks playing for a shot at the finals, the relevant song du jour is the Doublemint twins jingle, of course. But I regret (no, I don’t!) to inform you that while I was browsing some ideas for this section, I came across the following Twitter conversation from last season, presented without further commentary:

Wait—I do have further commentary, which is that shortly after seeing the above tweet, I was browsing NHL dot com and happened across an article about Duchene’s double-OT Game 6 winner over his former Avalanche team titled “Dutched Down in Denver: How Matt Duchene’s Hockey Career Came Full Circle in Game 6.” Oh, my stars!

The Representative Quotes

“I’ve told our group before that sometimes the toughest series are early in the playoffs.” —Stars coach Pete DeBoer, who also mused: “Just hard to believe with a gauntlet like that that you’re only halfway there.”

For the Oilers, on the other hand, the hard part of that gauntlet may have come and gone many months ago. “It is just death by a thousand cuts—that is what it feels like,” said McDavid back in November, with the Oilers having gotten off to a 2-7-1 start to the season. “One mistake and it costs us, and another little mistake and it just snowballs. It is tough to chase games.”

The next day, hockey analyst Elliotte Friedman pointed out on his podcast that “the Oilers always go through one week a season where it looks like the Titanic is sinking.” Since then, though, those thousand cuts have turned into a lovely mosaic, and the ship has become almost buoyant.

The Representative Players

Trailing 3-2 in their second-round series against Vancouver, the Oilers turned in a decisive 5-1 road win to send the series back to the friendly confines of Edmonton. That road game featured scoring from Edmonton’s future and its past: First, 22-year-old Dylan Holloway eluded top Vancouver defenseman Quinn Hughes to notch the first goal, and then Ryan Nugent-Hopkins—who has been an Oiler longer than anyone else on the team, ever since he was a skinny teen being picked first 13 (!) years ago—added two assists and a goal for good measure.

And speaking of a glimpse into the future, Stars sophomore forward Johnston is the kind of young Dallas talent who has a real chance to jump from local favorite to national name with a few more playoff goals. (When the only answers to a trivia question are you and Wayne Gretzky, you’re on to something.)

The Best Players Who Need to Be the Best Players

No pressure, Oettinger, but really good play from you has kind of become table stakes for the Stars, so, ah, keep it up? As for the Oilers, it sounds obvious because it is: It’s hard to imagine a world in which they overcome Dallas if their one-two punch of McDavid and Draisaitl doesn’t have those sorts of goals and games.

Coaches Corner

The Stars’ DeBoer has coached two other franchises to a Cup Final in his day: the Devils in 2012 and the Sharks in 2016. (Pavelski was on that latter team.) And both times he has fallen to a guy who wasn’t even at the helm of his team at the start of the season.

Every few years, like clockwork, an underperforming (and often just plain unlucky) team comes along that fires its coach early in the season and then takes off and never looks back. It happened to the Cup-winning Penguins in 2009 and 2016, the Kings in 2012 (Daryl Sutter memorably described being in his barn when he got that call—“I wasn’t shoveling shit, but I had that day”), and the Blues in 2019.

And who knows, maybe it will happen to the Oilers this season. One minute Jay Woodcroft was explaining to a local beat writer that “I don’t read your stuff, Spec,” and the next minute he and his assistant were walking the plank. Since hiring Kris Knoblauch, the team has gone 46-18-5.

The Outcome

So far this postseason, the Dallas Stars have already knocked off the two most recent Cup champions, recovered from a slow start on home ice, and shown their mettle in Game 7s. Their roster is lousy with players who can hear the tick-tock of their playing careers winding down—but who also have the playoff experience necessary to turn the clock back. I think this every season, and I’m thinking it again now: It can’t possibly be long before the Oilers finally locate a netminder befitting their offensive firepower and strike it rich. But this is not that year. Stars in six.