EDMONTON, Alberta — The Florida Panthers arrived in Edmonton on Wednesday after travel delays, but were rather amused by all the concerns ahead of Thursday’s Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final.
“It’s really funny how everything gets hyped up in the Cup Final,” Panthers forward Kyle Okposo said during Thursday morning skate. “It happens to every team four times a year in the regular season and nobody says anything. And now it’s like, ‘Oh my god, they’re not going to play!'”
Torrential rains in South Florida on Wednesday caused widespread flooding and major delays to transportation, including the Panthers’ charter flight. The flight was bound for Edmonton and was delayed for several hours. Fans and media were tracking the flight online to see when it would arrive in Edmonton. The plane landed at 8 p.m. local time, about two hours after the team was scheduled to be interviewed at the Edmonton Oilers’ arena.
“Even if I got there at 2 a.m., I always knew I’d get out eventually. I was going to be here,” Okposo said. “Honestly, we were all having fun.”
Unknown to the players, even Edmonton’s air traffic controllers I was looking forward to participatingOne pilot jokingly told the Panthers’ charter pilot, “We’ll be waiting two hours before we run out of fuel and have to divert out of Edmonton.”
Rather than flying immediately to Edmonton after Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final on Monday night, the Panthers opted to remain in South Florida despite weather forecasts calling for heavy rain on Wednesday.
“We pay really smart people to give us better answers than we can,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “This is the way we do it, and there’s a reason for it, and I’m 100 percent comfortable with it. When a player has a cold, they never come to me and ask how to fix it.”
“We spent an hour at the rink, maybe a little longer. We were sitting there and our chefs were unbelievable. Our coaches gained seven pounds yesterday. That’s the only impact.”
Morris said the Panthers players spent another 90 minutes on the tarmac after boarding the plane, watching film, sleeping, playing cards and doing the usual road trip activities.
“We love adversity. It gave us more time to bond as a team. It was fun,” forward Evan Rodriguez said. “We had some guys go behind the scenes to do some things that we normally wouldn’t do. [happen] To get us up in the sky and to be happy that we could finally take off.
“It was either sitting on the plane or coming here and hanging out in the lounge. So for us it made no difference.”
The Panthers, who hold a 2-0 lead over the Oilers, said the delay of the game will not hinder their preparations for Game 3.
“No, I’m totally OK,” defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “I had a practice in the morning and I got like nine hours of sleep last night, so it was awesome.”
Added forward Matthew Tkachuk: “Honestly, it wasn’t a big deal. I think most of the guys, when they got to the hotel, they probably did something, like a pool or a bike ride or whatever. It was a long flight. When they got to the hotel, they did that and went to bed right away.”
Morris acknowledged the harshness of South Florida’s weather.
“I’m joking, but there are people in Florida right now who are suffering from flooding,” he said. “What happened there is serious, but our day was not serious.”
