Connor McDavid had a goal and an assist in the opening period to get Edmonton going, Stuart Skinner stopped 34 shots for his hometown team and the Oilers capped an improbable run to the Stanley Cup final by beating the Dallas Stars by 2 on Sunday night -1 to beat.
Zach Hyman also scored — as did McDavid, on a power play in the first period — and Evan Bouchard had two assists for the Oilers, who won the Western Conference in six games and will play for the Cup for the first time since 2006.
They’ll head to Florida for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, which kicks off Saturday night. The Panthers are playing in the title series for the third time after being defeated by Colorado in 1996 and losing to Vegas in five games last year.
Mason Marchment scored midway through the third period and Jake Oettinger stopped eight shots for the Stars, who finished the regular season with the second-best record in the NHL: 113 points, just one behind the New York Rangers in the race for the presidents. Trophy.
But the Stars, like the Rangers, let a 2-1 lead slip away in the conference finals. Dallas scored five goals in Game 3 to take the series lead; the Stars scored a total of four goals in the next three games.
Oettinger went to the bench with about 2:20 to go, but the Stars only got two shots the rest of the way, their desperate attempts to tie the game and extend the series falling short.
Just by reaching the Cup Final, Edmonton has done something extraordinary: clinched the title series after being 10 points ahead of a playoff spot during the regular season. Entering the games on November 24, the Oilers were 5-12-1, 10 points behind Seattle and St. Louis for the final wild card spot in the West and 19 points behind Vegas for the top spot in the conference.
Those days are now long forgotten.
That’s when the Oilers — a few weeks after Kris Knoblauch took over as coach from Jay Woodcroft, who was fired after a 3-9-1 start — began an eight-game winning streak and the long climb out the basement of the NHL began.
Starting with that eight-game winning streak, the Oilers – who went on a 16-game winning streak not long after the eight-game series ended – were the best team in the NHL for the remainder of the regular season. They were 44-15-5 the rest of the way and led the league in goals (239) and goal difference (plus-76) during that period.
And now the final awaits.
Edmonton becomes only the third team in NHL history to reach the finals after being 10 points or more out of a playoff spot; the others were Toronto in 1958-59 and St. Louis in 2018-19. The Blues won the cup that season.
The Oilers had just three shots in the first period of Game 6. They were enough.
McDavid opened the scoring with a spectacular goal, weaving through traffic before beating Oettinger high for a 1-0 lead. He then found Hyman in the slot for another power-play score late in the first; the shots at the time were 6-3 Dallas, but the score was 2-0 in Edmonton and the Oilers were on the road.