The Edmonton Oilers lived to see another day after an emphatic 8-1 win on Saturday night. They have a chance yet again to live another day on Tuesday night as both sides get ready for Game 5.
The puck drops at 8:00 pm EST.
The Oilers’ season was over in November, down 3-2 against Vancouver, and again down 2-1 to the Stars. Negative narratives have floated around this team over many stretches of the 82-game season, and again throughout the spring.
However, if they win tonight, they are right back in the series, and everything is back to normal. Heading into every Game 6 in any league’s playoff history, someone had to be up 3-2, and someone had to be down 3-2. Many teams have come back to win a series after being down by one game, and the Oilers firmly believe they can add their name to the list.
How will tonight’s game unfold?
Oilers Embracing ‘One Game at a Time’ Mentality
The playoffs are chalked full of clichés. “It’s a long series”, “You don’t win a series in Game 1”, “That’s playoff hockey,” and the list goes on.
“One game at a time” might be the most popular and most used, and with the Oilers being down 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals, that phrase can be seen all over the city of Edmonton.
Leon Draisaitl seems to believe it wholeheartedly.
“If you look at the top of the mountain right now, it’s pretty steep. But taking one day at a time doesn’t sound so bad – Faced a lot of adversity this year, and always found a way to push through.”
Full Confidence in the Coach
Kris Knoblauch brought a lot to the job when he stepped behind the bench in November. New defensive schemes, and new forms of discipline, but NHL experience wasn’t one of them.
Yet, his calming presence has rippled through the Oilers’ locker room, and you can feel it settling in when it matters the most.
“He has belief in us and we have belief in each other.” Nugent-Hopkins said of Knoblauch. “He’s been like that all the way through.”
A few hours before Game 4, Knoblauch made the bold statement that he’s “looking forward to spending the next 10 days together.
“That belief that we’re going to spend the next 10 days together – we’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot of battle to go through in order to make that happen, but it does a lot for everybody.”
Oilers Goalie Stuart Skinner was in the middle of a hard decision by the coach in the middle of the second round when he was benched for two games before starting the rest of the playoffs.
What Can We Expect in Game 5?
It is hard to know what to expect after an 8-1 blowout. This could spark a fire in the Oilers. They can beat Sergei Bobrovsky, and they can out-skate and out-work the Panthers when they put their mind to it.
It can also have that effect on the other side. The Panthers were the favorite in the series for a reason. All season long they’ve put their foot on the throat of their opponent. Their physicality, goaltending, and strict defensive play leave little room for the opposition to gain any momentum.
After a game like Saturday, you can fully expect one of their best games of the postseason. That is just how this team operates.
Bobrovsky allowed five goals on 16 shots. We can be very confident that won’t happen again.
All of that being said, if you step back and look at this series a different way, the Oilers have good reason to believe in themselves and how they’ve played this series.
Game 1 they were the far better team, and Sergei Bobrovsky had the game of his life. In Game 3, they played a solid brand of hockey, but six minutes of mental breakdowns sunk them.
There’s a world where they are up 3-1, or the series is tied 2-2. But that’s not the world we are living in.
On Saturday, 15 players scored a total of 23 points. Eight of those points were from McDavid, Draisaitl, and Hyman. Of course, we don’t expect those kinds of numbers for a second straight game. It’s the principle of depth that has to be the same for the Oilers on Tuesday.
McDavid can’t do it alone, but he has to be the driving force.
At 11 pm EST, we’ll know what we’re doing on Friday. Until then, the Oilers fully believe they will be a part of our plans.
