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 fifth entry, Rodrigues talks about the Panthers’ tough 5-4 overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 4 at Amerant Bank Arena, what they needed to do against goalie Calvin Pickard and how they have to regroup fast for Game 5 at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
It was definitely a good start. It’s the way we wanted to come out, played a good 20 minutes and got out to a 3-0 lead.
But in the second we just sat back. We let them get back in the game. We missed a couple of golden opportunities to extend our lead, and we don’t capitalize on it. Then they kept coming, they get some penalty calls. You knew that was going to happen after the first and they capitalized.
With it tied 3-3 going into the third period, we just talked in the second intermission about getting back into our game. It was basically 0-0 at the time and it was just about getting back to what we did in the first.
Calvin Pickard came in for the second period, replacing starter Stuart Skinner, but you don’t really have to adjust. You do your goalie prescout, but at the end of the day, we have to get bodies in front of the net. We can’t let him see the puck. But yeah, he made some huge saves for them.
So, now you have to regroup and get ready for Game 5. You have to do the little things. You have to recover. It’s a three-game series now. We have to get one in their rink at some point, we won Game 2 there in double overtime, so we have to be mentally prepared to do that. We have to go out and put our best foot forward.
We have to put this one behind us. You just put it behind you, park it and just move on.
