Panthers one win from first Stanley Cup title after victory over Oilers
Following their leaders who got them this far in the playoffs and a winning recipe that has worked all season, the Florida Panthers are on the verge of lifting the Stanley Cup.
Captain Aleksander Barkov set up a goal and scored another, Sergei Bobrovsky made some of the biggest of his 32 saves to thwart a comeback and the Panthers held on to beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 in Game 3 of the cup final on Thursday evening.
They can win the first title in franchise history once Game 4 takes place in Edmonton on Saturday night.
“We are sure this will be the most difficult match,” Barkov said. “We take nothing for granted. Every day is one day at a time. Whether it concerns one period or one service, we look at it one by one. We’ve been like that all year.”
Florida took another step toward hockey’s mountain top by jumping on a handful of Edmonton turnovers and keeping Connor McDavid from scoring. A late rally brought the Oilers within one, but fell short as the Panthers leaned on Bobrovsky, who made a highlight-reel stop on Ryan McLeod in the final minutes to secure the win.
“They are a very skilled offensive team,” Bobrovsky said. “They’re going to make plays. You just focus on everyone and it’s a fun challenge. It’s a fun challenge to play against them because they bring the best.”
Long before that, Barkov forced one of Evan Bouchard’s giveaways seconds before Sam Reinhart’s goal, netminder Stuart Skinner coughed up the puck on Vladimir Tarasenko’s, and Darnell Nurse gave it away on Sam Bennett’s.
“We let them take that momentum and run with it,” Skinner said. “Just kind of stupid mistakes. That doesn’t have to happen.”
Barkov had one of the signature moments by getting past the defense and beating Skinner on a breakaway, giving the crowd some time to calm down before the first Stanley Cup Final game with fans in Edmonton since 2006. That journey also ended in a defeat.
To avoid that fate, the Oilers will have to pull off a 3-0 comeback that has only been done four times in NHL playoff history – and once in the finals all the way back in 1942 – to end the Canada Cup drought.
The last year a Canadian-based team won the title was Montreal in 1993, months before the Panthers’ inaugural season. Until this series they had gone 1-8 in the finals.
Behind Barkov and Bobrovsky, Florida has flipped that script. The top two candidates for the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP were arguably the two best players on the ice in Game 3, including Barkov rebounding after a high hit from Leon Draisaitl that knocked him out of Game 2 on Monday night.
“From the beginning, our competition, our will and our desire to win it was tremendous,” Bennett said. “Everyone, including our goalkeeper, fought like hell. It was nice to see the effort. You either have it or you don’t. We have 23 dogs on our team who want that. You either have it or you don’t.”
Another big reason the Panthers got here was winger Matthew Tkachuk, who also had a big assist and was responsible for piling the pressure on Edmonton.
The Oilers wilted under it, losing a game in which they were largely the better team but couldn’t overcome poorly timed miscues. Skinner allowed four goals on 23 shots and Warren Foegele, Philip Broberg and McLeod scored, while McDavid looked frustrated and out of place for the first time all playoffs.
“We’re trying to figure them out,” said McDavid, who put five shots on net. “We haven’t beaten them in three games. We have had processes that were good, but also processes that were bad.”
Pinning down elite opponents, defending them to the point that you doubt their ability to score, is a big part of the Panthers’ style and a big reason they are on the league’s biggest stage and the putting coldbloods on the ice for a potential championship celebration 2,500 miles from home.
In beating Edmonton on Thursday night, they also showed no ill effects from waiting to fly from South Florida to Alberta, a decision that was called into question when their plane was delayed by storms and arrived a few hours late on Wednesday – less than 24 hours. hours before the puck drops. Instead of looking jetlagged, the Panthers were ready to take advantage of opportunities to score and score when it mattered most.
“We stay in the moment,” Bobrovsky said. “We don’t think too much ahead. We just stay in the moment and enjoy the moment.”