It’s about time the best offense in the NHL started firing. The Edmonton Oilers finally remembered that they had the deadliest offense in the NHL this season and went to town on the LA Kings, scoring 3 unanswered goals and five in total to even the series at 2 games apiece.
Isn’t it nice when your star players actually show up?
The Edmonton Oilers may have finally turned the corner needed to get into the Second Round as they overcame a 3-0 Kings lead in the 1st period to not only win the game in overtime, but they did so in style as their star players put up five goals in Los Angeles.
That game was truly a great show of character and resiliency on behalf of Edmonton as I was beginning to think the Oilers had lost all their fight and tenacity showed last year in the playoffs and in the final two or so months of the season.
Prior to last night, everyone on that team, aside from Leon Draisaitl (who’s been insanely good) and Evan Bouchard (who’s sneakily been the most productive defenseman in the playoffs thus far), was sinking under the massive pressure of winning a Stanley Cup for the legendary Edmonton Oilers franchise.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evander Kane, Zach Hyman, and even Connor McDavid, all of whom are getting paid at least $5M+, weren’t pulling their weight on the score sheet as they had a combined 8 points in 3 games, even though the Oilers had scored nine goals in that span.
Just eight points for Zach Hyman (80-point scorer), Evander Kane (.700 PPG scorer this year), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (100-point scorer), and Connor McDavid (150+ point scorer, Art Ross, Rocket Richard, and presumptive Ted Lindasy and Hart winner) is not good enough! And these guys knew it.
After having one of the worst 1st periods I’ve seen a team have this postseason (Oilers allowed 3 goals in a nine-minute span to close out the period), these superstars and stars picked themselves up and exploded in the 2nd. Led by Evan Bouchard, Leon Draisaitl, and Jack Cambell, who stopped 27/28 shots for a .964 SV% in relief for Stuart Skinner, the Oilers silenced the Crypto.com (still a stupid name) crowd as both Bouchard (1 G, 2 A) and Draisaitl (2 G, 1 A) got on the score board.
Meanwhile, the Edmonton powerplay finally started clicking at its outrageously high level again as the Oilers scored two of their five goals on the PP, while Draisaitl’s 2nd (and the Oilers 3rd of the 2nd period) came with just 10.5 seconds to go in the period. It really was the most impressive Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde performance between two periods I’ve seen in this postseason thus far.
What was even better for the Oilers was the fact that both McDavid (3 A) and Nugent-Hopkins (1 A) were able to break their scoring slumps (well, more like a dip for McDavid) on the powerplay, which will be vital for this team as the series essentially becomes a best 2/3.
Nevertheless, despite going down 4-3 early on in the 3rd to a sick backhand/five-hole goal by Matt Roy of all people, the Oilers never gave up and continued to throw bodies forward as if their postseason lives depended on it…because they did.
If the Oilers lost this game and had to travel back to Edmonton being down 3-1, the series would have been toast as only 10% of all teams trailing 3-1 in NHL history (aka: 100+ years of postseason hockey) have ever won a series 4-3.
In fact, over the last 13 years, there has only been nine 3-1 comebacks, while there have been 218 NHL playoff series (there were eight extra series in 2020 due to the qualifying tournament). That’s a 4.1% probability of just having a series comeback from being down 3-1 occurring (aka: most teams don’t even get in that position, let alone win from it).
The probability of actually coming back from being down 3-1 in the last 13 years and at least making it to Game 7 is 42% (8 successful comebacks, 11 unsuccessful comebacks), which is actually a lot higher than I would have imagined given the likelihood of the situation even coming to fruition.
But, seeing how the teams that made the comeback ended up reaching their, respective, conference finals 89% of the time (8/9), 56% reached the Stanley Cup Final (5/9), and 22% actually won the Stanley Cup (2013 Chicago Blackhawks, 2014 Los Angeles Kings), they must have just had the Hockey Gods on their side that year.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, the Oilers had to win this game and needed one of the underperforming stars to step up in the big moment…which happened in both regulation and overtime. Evander Kane, who had been held to juts 1 goal in the three games prior, snipped a shot into the top corner from just outside the left faceoff circle, tying the game 4-4 with under four minutes left.
Then, about halfway through overtime, Zach Hyman, who had been held goalless through the series, sneaked a wrister under Joonas Korpisalo’s arm and took back the Oilers their home ice advantage back as the series now shifts back to Edmonton.
I can’t stress how important these goals and points for these players might end up being as they not only snatched momentum back in the series, but they also released the internal pressure of “not stepping up” from their backs. Such pressure can really destroy a team’s promising Stanely Cup prospects as the Leafs’ superstars have proven these last six years.
I’ve got to take the Oilers in a best 2/3 series on home ice as the team’s superstars now seem to be firing, while the Kings losing 5-4 in overtime after going up 3-0 has to be a confidence killer for this young team. Right?
I guess we’ll find out.
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