FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It’s anyone’s guess who starts in goal for the Edmonton Oilers when they face elimination in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.
Coach Kris Knoblauch did not say Monday whether it would be Stuart Skinner or Calvin Pickard.
“It’s who we feel can win us a game,” Knoblauch said after practice. “That’s how it’s gone in other games, and we’ll make that decision.”
Skinner was Edmonton’s starting goaltender to begin the playoffs, lost the first two games and was replaced by Pickard, who went 6-0 before getting injured. Skinner also started the first four in the final, got pulled twice and for Pickard, who won Game 4 and lost Game 5.
“A strength of our team is that we can go with both guys,” winger Connor Brown said. “They’re up for the challenge. I mean, they’re both absolute pros. Both have given this their best every time they come in there, and they both work hard, so we’re in it as a group.”
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins did not practice Monday, though Knoblauch expects the Oilers’ longest-tenured player to be in the lineup Tuesday night in Sunrise.
That is a constant, even if Nugent-Hopkins is not 100% healthy, though there could be other changes coming. Either Jeff Skinner or Vasily Podkolzin may be ticketed for the press box as a healthy scratch up front, while John Klingberg is a candidate to return on defense.
Status quo Panthers
Florida will be making no such changes, barring something unforeseen, in the first chance to clinch back-to-back championships. The same 12 forwards and six defensemen who have been in place since A.J. Greer returned from injury in Game 3 figure to be in the lineup again.
“It’s all health based,” coach Paul Maurice said. “We’re a pretty healthy team, fortunately, at this point, and we’ve got good players.”
That includes Matthew Tkachuk, who missed the remainder of the regular season after getting injured at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. After some ups and downs and uncertainty, he’s “feeling the best” he has during this run.
“I thought there was maybe a 50% chance I wouldn’t be playing as close to about a week or five days before the playoffs started,” Tkachuk said. “Very lucky and fortunate that I’ve got great trainers and doctors, and they all somehow got me healthy enough to play.”
Florida Olympians
The Panthers have five players already bound for the 2026 Olympics in Milan: Tkachuk for the U.S., Sam Reinhart for Canada, Aleksander Barkov for Finland, Nico Sturm for Germany and Uvis Balinskis for Latvia. The 12 teams participating unveiled their preliminary six-man rosters Monday.
Sturm and Balinskis have not played in the final, but the Olympic announcements put them in the spotlight.
“Being an Olympian is something that not a lot of athletes can say about their careers,” Sturm said. “It’s the best athletes in the world from every sport, and it’s definitely something that I’ve marked on my calendar, something that I want to achieve in my career. It’d be a huge accomplish to be able to play there and, once your career’s done, to say you participated in the Olympics, I think that’s a huge accomplishment not to be understated.”
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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
