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 first entry from Stanley Cup Final media day on Tuesday, Rodrigues talks about his being in the Cup Final for the second straight season (this is the Panthers’ third consecutive trip to the Final), how it’s a little more familiar and how formidable a foe the Oilers will be.
Up to about an hour ago when all the media events started, I don’t think I really thought about being back in the Cup Final again much. It was just, ‘All right, we’re going day by day.’ Now that media day has started and we’re here in Edmonton and tomorrow is Game 1, I’m getting the same feelings I got last year, the same excitement flowing through my body, the same jitters. The smile’s coming back. The excitement smile is coming back and I’m finding it difficult to take it off my face. I’m looking forward to getting started.
I was just doing an interview, and everything feels more comfortable this time around. The five-hour flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Edmonton feels more comfortable. The media day feels more comfortable. Everything just feels a little more comfortable. I think I’m getting the same excitement from it, I’m starting to get the same, not butterflies per se, but the same jitters from it. This is the start. You’re relatively calm in the past handful of days, getting your rest, your recovery and dialing things in, but now that we’re here, you’re starting to get the excitement flowing through the body.
Honestly, I thought we would be back in the Final this season. You go through the regular season, it’s a grind and you go through your ups and downs, but the roster was there. A lot of the pieces were there from last year and I especially thought we’d be back after the (Trade) Deadline. We make a lot of good moves, brought in a lot of key pieces. Our lineup looked complete in a way, and I thought if we did what we had to do, then we would be back. I thought we’ve done a great job in the first three rounds getting here and we’ll look to continue to do that.
I don’t know if expected is the word, but I’m not surprised we’re playing the Oilers in the Final for the second straight season. There are a lot of things, a lot of bounces you need, a lot of injury prevention stuff you need to go right through the year to get you back to the Final. It’s very rare that two teams match up again the very next year, but I’m not surprised it’s them. They’re a [heck] of a team. They’ve added depth to their team and it’s going to be another tough test. There is a familiarity there but at the same time, I think they’re a new team like we’re a little bit different as well.
I think there are things that happened last year that you can improve on, that we can change but for the most part it’s a day-by-day thing in the Final. You take care of your day. Like today we’ll do our media, we’ll get what we need and tomorrow we’ll get ready for game day. It more comes down to the familiarity and the comfortability with being in this situation. We’ll look to try to not ride the roller coaster, try to stay pretty level-headed. There are a lot of emotions involved in this series, and we’ll try to level them as much as we can.
