Florida Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues will be keeping his own blog throughout the 2024 Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers. He will check in regularly with behind-the-scenes access.
In his sixth entry, Rodrigues talks about the Panthers losing 5-3 to the Oilers in Game 5, finding more positives than they had in Game 4 and going back to Edmonton with a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series.
There was a lot of emotion at the beginning of the game. I thought we had a good start, I thought we were playing well. Then they get a little bit of a momentum swing and then we started to build and then we started getting to our game. But they capitalized on a couple of power plays. That was kind of the start.
We came out hard, we had a great start but then they got a short-handed goal and they kind of piled it on after that. We got away from our game a little bit after a good start and they started to build off that.
We’ll definitely take some things from the second and third when we started to come back. But in the same token, we were down two goals, 4-2, so they’re probably sitting back and kind of letting us come to them a little bit. It was a similar circumstance in Game 3 when we had a late lead, we’re up 4-1 and we sit back and they kind of come at us. We just have to get after it from the drop of the puck next game and go from there.
There were things to like in the third period, but we just have to get to our game faster. No one said this was going to be easy. We’re a resilient group, we have been all year, and we’ll continue to be.
We’re going to stick together. We’re going to get ready for Game 6. We’re going to look at film, do all the things we need to do to put ourselves in the best position. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.
