Florida Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues will be keeping his own blog throughout the 2025 Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers. He will check in regularly with behind-the-scenes access.
In his second entry, Rodrigues talks about the ups and downs of Game 1, where the Panthers led 3-1 early in the second period but lost 4-3 in overtime.
I had a smile on my face as player announcements were made prior to Game 1. It’s just about being in the moment, enjoying what we do. Yeah, you have to enjoy this. You can’t be nervous in the moment.
Game 1 was exactly what it was and exactly what this series will be. I think there are things we can improve on, but yeah, it’s going to be one-goal-game type of series. We’ll just have to continue to grind them out.
I had the high-sticking penalty late in the second period. It’s never fun sitting in the penalty box. You never want to take a penalty, never want to put your team down but I thought our penalty kill was really good for the most part. Didn’t make a play on that last one when Leon Draisaitl scored the winner, but I thought overall we did a pretty good job.
Sergei Bobrovsky gave us a chance (42 saves on 46 shots). He does it every night, that’s what you want in your goaltender, and he did that. He made some huge saves. He kept us in it. He gave us a chance in overtime.
It’s been a while since we played overtime (Game 3 of the second round against the Toronto Maple Leafs) but I think we’ll probably expect a couple more going forward here. You have to control the momentum in overtime. I thought they did a better job of it. We came out strong in overtime, we had our looks, we had two or three great chances that didn’t go in for us. They turned it a bit, kind of went back and forth for a little bit and then they capitalized on their chance.
After this, you have to turn the page. You have to. Sulking about it or moping about it isn’t going to help you. You turn the page, you get ready for Game 2 here on Friday. I don’t think we played our best and we have to in overtime, so we’ll look at the video and find ways to get better.
