Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
EDMONTON –
Connor McDavid dragged his team back into Stanley Cup contention.
Edmonton’s supporting cast took over from their superstar captain on Friday.
Now the Oilers are one win away from history. And the Panthers are sitting one humiliating loss.
Zach Hyman scored his 16th goal of the playoffs and Stuart Skinner made 20 saves as Edmonton defeated Florida 5-1 on Friday to force a Game 7.
“The league is too good,” Oilers center Leon Draisaitl said. “We need depth, we need other guys to step up. We’ve had that throughout the run.”
Warren Foegele, with a goal and an assist, and Adam Henrique provided the rest of the offense before Ryan McLeod and Darnell Nurse added empty netters for Edmonton, which has bounced back with three straight wins to clinch the title series after winning 3- 0. .
Used to seeing his name in bright lights, Draisaitl had just two assists in the series entering Game 6 before setting up Foegele’s opener as one of 11 players – none of them named McDavid – to find the score sheet.
“It’s been a hell of a story so far,” said the German, who was critical of himself on Friday morning. “Very pleased to give ourselves a chance.”
Aleksander Barkov answered for the Panthers – a group that will go home looking for answers with their tight grip on hockey’s holy grail having evaporated. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 16 shots.
“We have good moments in the games,” said Barkov, whose team will host Monday’s winner-takes-all finale in Sunrise, Fla. “We have to take those into the next game.”
Edmonton looks to become just the fifth team in NHL history to win a best-of-seven contest after trailing 3-0 – and just the second in the Cup final, joining the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1942.
“The job is not done,” Hyman said. “Everyone will forget if we don’t finish it.”
Warren Foegele (37) of the Edmonton Oilers celebrates a goal against the Florida Panthers during the first period of Game 6 of the NHL Stanley Cup Final in Edmonton, Friday, June 21, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
A win by the Oilers in the final game of the 2023-24 season would also mark the end of a 30-year Canada Cup drought that dates back to the Montreal Canadiens’ 1993 victory over Wayne Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings.
“We’ve been a pretty loose group,” Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “It’s nice to be around this team … they’re having the time of their lives.”
The orange-and-blue party started around Rogers Place in the hours before the 6 pm local time ‘puck’ drop.
Well-oiled fans lined up for blocks around the arena to get space in the outdoor viewing area. Others packed bars and patios in the sunshine with their hockey team still playing on the second day of summer. One group drove an Oilers-themed Zamboni around the city’s downtown streets.
The raucous atmosphere inside the rink hit a fever pitch when the Oilers hit the ice, with the scoreboard’s sound meter touching 113.8 decibels before the latest NHL game ever played in Canada during a non-pandemic season.
“It means the world to us,” Draisaitl said of giving the home crowd a huge boost. “I’ve been here a long time and been through some pretty bad years. The people who were there tonight showed up every night.
“Give that is really special to them.”
Edmonton – now 5-0 when facing elimination in the playoffs, including an 8-1 win in Game 3 and a 5-3 win in Game 5 to stay alive thanks to McDavid’s four-point performances in a row – opened the score at 7:27 of the first period when Draisaitl found Foegele for his third of the postseason.
The Oilers went up 2-0 just 46 seconds into the second off a 2-on-1 that saw Mattias Janmark find Henrique before he settled the puck and ripped off his fourth.
Barkov fired past Skinner just 10 seconds later, but Knoblauch was rightly challenged for offside.
“The only hesitation was that maybe it wasn’t the right video,” he said. “In my mind it was definitely offside, but I guess you never know.”
The Oilers killed a penalty later in the period – the 45th in the last 46 situations – before Skinner stopped Barkov well on a 2-on-1.
Hyman put his team up by three with 1:40 left in the second when he took a pass from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and raced in on a break and beat Bobrovsky to the back for his 70th overall including the regular season.
The only other players with as many goals in a single postseason over the last 30 years are Joe Sakic (18 in 1996) and Pavel Bure (16 in 1994).
Chants of “Ser-gei! Ser-gei!” rang around the cavernous building as the clock ticked down with the Oilers holding an 18-4 aggregate score over the Panthers since the third period of Game 3 .
Florida got on the board at 1:28 of the third when Edmonton couldn’t get the puck out and Barkov pushed in front to slide his eighth past Skinner.
Edmonton forward Derek Ryan then took a penalty, but his teammates once again killed the threat before McLeod and Nurse, with a basic assist from Skinner after a great save, scored into the empty net to spark wild scenes outside in and out of Rogers. Place.
A team that climbed out of a regular season hole that had them 32nd in the overall standings before eventually going on a 16 game winning streak – and a pair of other long streaks – the Oilers now head to South Florida sitting one win from hockey’s ultimate prize.
“Game 7 will be my last game to coach this group,” said Knoblauch. “Some people are going to be moving on, that’s just the nature of the business.
“It’s been a real pleasure.”
There are only 60 minutes — and maybe more — to go.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on June 21, 2024.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/oilers-force-game-7-of-stanley-cup-final-with-5-1-win-over-panthers-1.6935746
