Leon Draisaitl scored the overtime winner and backup goalie Calvin Pickard was outstanding as the Edmonton Oilers came back to beat the Florida Panthers.
The Canadian Press
After they had been absolutely shredded in the first period of Thursday night’s Game 4, the Edmonton Oilers retreated to their weeping room. You spot the Florida Panthers three goals, and you’ve lost. That’s how it works in the NHL.
The senior man in the room, Corey Perry, yelled at his teammates for a while. Then they agreed to go out and try again.
“They talk to guys like me,” said one of the eventual goal scorers, Vasily Podkolzin. “We’ll find a way to score one and then everything starts rolling.”
“Almost strange,” was how another scorer, Jake Walman, described the mood afterward. “Knowing as a team we were going to come back in this game.”
If so, they were the only ones.
Leon Draisaitl (29) celebrates with Oilers teammates after scoring the overtime winner on Thursday night.Mike Carlson/Getty Images
Edmonton tied it 3-3 in the second. They took the lead in the third, 4-3. They gave the tying goal back with 20 seconds left in regulation. After both teams had hit the iron in overtime, Leon Draisaitl won it.
“We wanted to come out strong tonight, but … we were kind of lollygagging around a little bit,” Draisaitl said. “Certainly not the time to lollygag around, right?”
Certainly not. Draisaitl doesn’t have to say that he never lollygags. He only makes haste.
If Edmonton goes on to win this series and end Canada’s more than 30-year Stanley Cup curse, everything started coming together on Thursday. You’d be hard pressed to think of a sloppier game of top-flight hockey, or a more fun one to watch.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce take in Game 4.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
In the movie to come, they’ll start with Taylor Swift. She was here. You knew that because the bodyguards shuffling around backstage were suddenly much more menacing. Apparently, she doesn’t just stage big events. She also knows how to pick them.
Florida came out as they had in Game 3 – bursting with malevolent energy. Edmonton did the same – flabby, careless lollygaggers.
Evander Kane sticked a guy in the face. Darnell Nurse did one of those trips they pull in professional wrestling. That was a goal. Matthias Ekholm gouged Brad Marchand. Another goal.
“Two high stickings, which I’m hating,” said Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch afterward.
Then a pair of Edmonton defencemen lost track of Carter Verhaeghe streaking back toward the Oiler goal chasing a dumped puck. Another goal.
The Oilers solution – a little bit of yelling, a little positive self-talk, and blame it on goalie Stuart Skinner. He was pulled after one, and has probably lost his starting job. It’s not much of a repayment for the licking he’s taken in recent nights on behalf of the team.
Bring on Calvin Pickard, the closer. All the luck that had gone against Skinner turned in Pickard’s favour. While the skaters were dragging Edmonton back into it, he closed off several Florida assaults that would almost certainly have been terminal.
A.J. Greer and Evan Rodrigues react after the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl scored in overtime.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Pickard is now a perfect 7-0 in these playoffs. He played only two periods and he was still the game’s most important player.
The other one was Draisaitl. Connor McDavid may be the best player in the world, but no one has a better sense of timing than the German. This was his second overtime winner in the series.
The series now shifts back to Edmonton, where the atmosphere will be frenzied.
Florida’s players have the knack of never seeming bothered by any turn of events. It’s the key to their mystique. But after Thursday, they looked wary for the first time in this post-season. Maybe it had occurred to them that even their luck can run out.
Two games into this championship, it was being talked about as the best Cup final in a generation. A yin and yang classic featuring two big ideas about how the game should be played, and how hockey teams should be constructed.
Like a lot of things once they get exposed to Florida, that thesis got wobbly in Sunrise. This wasn’t sharp hockey. Nobody was peaking at the right moment. It was as messy as honey-garlic wings, but what a mess. Four games in, and these two clubs have combined for nearly as many goals as they scored in seven last year. It’s not that there’s more space out there. It’s that all the penalties are clearing the ice of bodies to get in the way.
The Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers 5-4 in overtime in Game 4 to tie the Stanley Cup Final.
The Canadian Press
The result is no clinic. You’re watching two tired teams stand in the centre of the ring throwing nothing but uppercuts. The tactics are out the window. There’s only flat feet and knockouts left.
Everybody goes on and on about winning mentalities, which means that there must be such a thing as a losing mentality. At different points on Thursday, both teams had one of those. In the end, Edmonton decided it wanted to lose less.
However this ends, it has already put this rivalry up there with the great ones. It’s not even over, and a part of you is already hoping they can do it again next year.