Rodrigues is Florida's unlikely Cup holder

The Panthers' winger steps into the spotlight as they lead Edmonton, 2-0.

You’ve seen him before. This week he’s Evan Rodrigues. In past years he was Max Talbot of Pittsburgh, Dave Bolland of Chicago, Alec Martinez of Los Angeles, Ruslan Fedotenko of Tampa Bay. For all these months and years he was there on the grid, a useful but replaceable engine part. Then the Stanley Cup Final comes along, and it’s time for him to tap you on the shoulder and put a face with the name.

Rodrigues is a 30-year-old winger. His business card said Have Shot, Will Travel. He played with the Sabres and the Penguins and the Avalanche and left good impressions everywhere, but not until the Florida Panthers gave him a four-year contract did Rodrigues feel rooted. In the first two games of this series, he has stepped out of the team picture and led the parade.

Rodrigues had the second goal in Florida’s 3-0 victory over the Oilers on Saturday. He saw Sam Bennett beat a couple of Edmonton defensemen to the puck, flashed into the open area, got the pass and zapped a shot past Stuart Skinner. 

On Monday he was even more consequential. He took advantage of Aleksander Barkov’s screen that blinded Skinner, fielded an inadvertently perfect pass from Edmonton’s Evan Bouchard, and powdered a shot into the top left corner, after it nicked the Oilers’ Mattias Ekholm.

And he rang down the curtain on Edmonton’s streak of 34 consecutive penalty kills, redirecting the goal that made it 3-1, after Anton Lundell had gotten past Bouchard on the near wall. It became 4-1 with Aaron Ekblad’s empty-netter, and when it was over the Panthers had held Edmonton to 14 shots on goal. They lead the Final, two games to none.

That power-play opportunity, with 9:28 left in the third period, could actually swing the series in a most unfortunate way. The penalty was roughing by Leon Draisaitl. He got two minutes for leaving his skates and smashing Barkov in the jaw with an elbow. Barkov, Florida’s best player, sagged to the ice, tried to sit up, and slumped again. He was in concussion protocol for the rest of the game. Neither coach Paul Maurice nor winger Matthew Tkachuk commented on the hit, but the steam that emanated from their ears told the story. “This isn’t the Oprah Winfrey Show,” Maurice said. “My feelings don’t matter.”

Draisaitl should have received a five-minute major, if not a suspension, for this ravenous hit.  Teammate Warren Foegele got one, plus an ejection, for trying to take out the knee of Eetu Luostarinen in the first period. Luostrainen broke his tibia in last year’s Eastern Conference Final and missed the Cup Final loss to Vegas, so the Panthers were braced for the worst, but he returned. Just as significantly, Edmonton defenseman Darnell Nurse, who is having one of the toughest plus-minus playoffs in league history, took a shot in the hip from Rodrigues and only played four minutes, 20 seconds. Any Oiler will be the target of the Panthers’ pique if Draisaitl is playing Game 3 on Thursday and Barkov isn’t.

So it’s getting real. The Aflac Duck will be busy the next two days, soothing everyone’s wounds. The Oilers also have a sprained power play, with no goals in seven chances, and McDavid has no goals and one assist. Draisaitl hasn’t touched the sheet at all. Their only goal was a fairly innocent drive by Ekholm in Game 2, maybe the easiest chance Sergei Bobrovsky has had in the series. Otherwise the Florida goalie was excellent on the few occasions he had to be. Florida demonstrated how powerless McDavid and Draisaitl are when they’re two zones away from the promised land.

With Evander Kane struggling to overcome a sports hernia and with all those defensive miscues, the Oilers are searching for their own Rodrigues. He has six playoff goals, half as many as in his 80-game regular season. In the past three years he has scored 43, 39, and 39 points for Pittsburgh, Colorado and Florida. In doing so he has continued to show how he can meld with headline players. That began at Boston University, when Jack Eichel was the leading scorer in the NCAA and Rodrigues was second. But they only played together when Rodrigues was a senior and Eichel was a freshman. This came after a subpar junior season, and apparently wasn’t impressive enough to get Rodrigues drafted. He signed as a free agent with Buffalo.

Coaches like Rodrigues because he can play any position and on any line in almost any situation. “He’s been on a world tour through our lineup,” said Maurice, who promoted Rodriguez to the second line, with Tkachuk and Sam Bennett, four years ago. Management likes Rodrigues because he only makes $3 million a year on a four-year deal that he signed last year. But as Mike Rupp observed on SportsNet, it’s not a bad thing when your “depth players” have the scoring gene. Vladimir Tarasenko is suddenly a bottom six forward for Florida. He has 293 goals in his career.

Rodrigues grew up in Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb and the home of the Subban brothers, Joey Votto and Catherine O’Hara. His grandparents came to Canada from Portugal when Norbert, Evan’s dad, was 12. Norbert eventually became a bus driver. Evan had a viral infection in his knee when he was 10, and doctors thought amputation was a possibility, but came through it. His older brother Paul played hockey at SUNY-Oswego and then played in the low minors. Any spare change was channeled into the sons’ hockey careers.

Bolland is from Etobicoke, too. He provided the glue for the Chicago Blackhawks, and he scored the Cup-clinching goal in 2013, at the end of a 7-goal season. Talbot scored 12 for the 2009 Penguins but got two in the Game 7 clincher against Detroit.

Fedotenko, from Ukraine, had 17 goals for Tampa Bay in 2004, and ambushed Calgary with two in Game 7 of the Cup Final. Martinez, a Kings’ defenseman, got the 2014 clinchers in the Western Conference Final at Chicago, which happened in Game 7 overtime, and then the Cup Final against the Rangers. He had a career-high 11 goals that season.

Did Mike Rupp’s name ring a bell? It still does, in the ears of Anaheim fans. In 2003 Rupp spent almost twice as much time with the Albany River Rats as he did with the New Jersey Devils. But he was out there in Game 7 of the Final, and scored twice against the Mighty Ducks, his sixth and seventh goals of the year on the NHL level.

If you suffer two unproductive games in February, hardly anyone outside the world of Fan Duel notices. If you’re McDavid and it happens in June, it’s four-alarm stuff, and yet it’s understandable, when the Panthers keep all 12 eyes on him. He had some impressive grand tours around the defense but rarely got into the scoring zone, and when he did get a breakaway, Tkachuk hassled him from the back side and Bobrovsky was able to turn him away.

The Oilers are not pointing their missile-defense system at Evan Rodrigues and aren’t likely to. But they’ll need to shake up something. Mostly they’ll need to purge the thought of having to win four of the next five games. If this series goes 7 games, that’s 12,700 extra air miles over five trips.

It’s a good time for a journeyman.