The Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers will meet in the Stanley Cup final for the second-straight season, beginning Wednesday at Rogers Place in Edmonton. It marks the first time that the same two clubs have met in consecutive years since Pittsburgh and Detroit in 2008 and 2009, but there has been an evolution of each club since they faced each other a year ago. 

While the core groups of each club are the same, the Panthers started the season with nine players who played on their championship squad departing via free agency or retirement. Florida GM Bill Zito faced the challenge of restocking the shelves with limited cap space. 

Zito plugged some of the holes last summer with bargain free agent veteran forwards Jesper Boqvist, A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek and defenseman Nate Schmidt, while also giving larger roles to youngster Mackie Samoskevich and Latvian blueliner Uvis Balinskis. Where Zito worked some magic was at the trade deadline, taking advantage of being able to place injured forward Matthew Tkachuk on long-term injured reserve to create cap space. 

Florida filled a gaping hole on the right side of their blueline created by the departure of Brandon Montour with the acquisition of Seth Jones from Chicago, and dealt a conditional 2027 pick to Boston for Brad Marchand. Jones has been a minutes-eater on defense and stepped up in the series-deciding victory over Toronto, while Marchand has 14 points in the post-season playing on the third line with Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell. 

The Oilers went through a managerial reshuffle last summer, moving on from Ken Holland and hiring three-time Cup-winning GM Stan Bowman.  Edmonton's CEO of Hockey Operations, Jeff Jackson, took over as interim GM in early July, and the moves he made (signing veteran forwards Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson, and trading center Ryan McLeod for prospect Matthew Savoie) were less than spectacular.   

Bowman lost youngsters Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg to St. Louis on offer sheets and had to swap veteran blueliner Cody Ceci to San Jose for Ty Emberson to open up cap space. But he made several useful depth additions early on, such as acquiring winger Vasili Podkolzin from Vancouver for a fourth-round pick, claiming Kasperi Kapanen off of waivers from the Blues, and signing veteran defenseman John Klingberg as a free agent in January. 

Edmonton used long-term injured reserve to their benefit at the deadline, keeping Evander Kane on LTIR until the playoffs, which enabled them to bolster their blueline with the acquisition of Jake Walman from San Jose, as well as adding rugged forward Trent Frederic from Boston. 

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