Originally posted on Sportsnaut
Now we’ve got ourselves a series in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final after the Edmonton Oilers defeated the Florida Panthers 5-3 on the road in Game 5 on Tuesday. Florida still leads the best-of-7 Cup Final 3-2, but it’s lost two straight and allowed 13 goals in the process of seeing a 3-0 series lead be whittled away.
The Oilers became the first team in NHL history to win a Game 5 on the road after trailing 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Final. And a quick reminder that only one team, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, has ever lost the first three games of the Final to go on and win the Stanley Cup.
That said, let’s check out the winners and losers from Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Oilers and Panthers.
Related: 2024 Stanley Cup Final: Schedule, results, TV info for Panthers-Oilers series
With no margin for error the past two games, the best player in the world has been, well, the best player in the Stanley Cup Final. Connor McDavid followed up his four-point (one goal, three assists) performance in Game 3 with another four-point outing in Game 4. This time he scored twice, once sneaking a bad-angle shot through Sergei Bobrovsky and then icing the win with an empty netter, and added two more assists. His helper on Corey Perry’s power-play goal, slicing through Panthers defenders at the end of a two-minute shift, was a thing of beauty.
It’s hard to really pin this loss on Sergei Bobrovsky, but he did allow four goals on 23 shots, including an inexcusable one from a bad angle by Connor McDavid that made it 3-0 in the second period, a time in the game he couldn’t let in a bad one with the Oilers already rolling. After a great start to the series, Bobrovsky has allowed nine goals on 39 shots and was pulled in Game 3.
For the second straight game Connor Brown helped the Oilers get off to a flying start with a shorthanded goal. In Game 3, it was his breakaway and pass to Mattias Janmark for a shortie. And in Game 4, Brown scored an unassisted shorthanded goal on a breakaway 5:30 into the first period to get the Oilers rolling. It was his second postseason goal and was a beauty of a finish. Brown and Co. killed off all three Panthers power plays on Tuesday.
Brandon Montour was on ice for only one Oilers goal, and later he did assist on an Evan Rodrigues goal that got the Panthers back to 4-2 in the second period, but his turnover that led to Connor Brown’s shorthanded breakaway goal in the first period was a crucial mistake. Unaware of Brown pushing up, Montour sent a soft pass along the Oilers blue line toward Aleksander Barkov. Brown picked it off, Montour couldn’t catch him sprinting the other way and the Panthers handed the Oilers the exact start they needed in a must-win game.
Matthew Tkachuk played far and away his best game of the Stanley Cup Final. His goal early in the second period stopped the bleeding for Florida and gave it life after Edmonton opened the game with three straight goals. And it was a snipe, top shelf over the glove. But that’s not all. Tkachuk was an absolute whirling dervish, leading all skaters with eight hits, flying all over the ice and later setting up Oliver Ekman-Larsson for a goal that made it 4-3. And, yes, that was Tkachuk who dove on his belly, fully stretched out, to save a possible empty-net goal before Connor McDavid put the rebound in.
The Panthers allowed one five-on-five goal in Game 4 but lost 5-3. That’s because they surrendered two power-play goals and a shortie, along with an empty-net goal. And Florida was blanked again on its own power play, that’s now 1-for-16 in the series and 1-for-20 dating back to the Eastern Conference Final. And now the Panthers penalty kill has allowed three power-play goals in the past two games.
Corey Perry scored his first goal this postseason to give the Oilers a 4-1 lead at 11:54 of the second period. Jumping over the boards at the last second, Perry joined a rush into the offensive zone, went to the net and buried a gorgeous Connor McDavid feed for a power-play goal. It was his 54th goal in 213 Stanley Cup Playoff games for the veteran forward, who was scratched in Game 3 of this series.
Stop us if this is getting redundant. Carter Verhaeghe was minus-3 for the third consecutive game, making him a whopping minus-9 the past three games in this series. That means the Panthers forward is on ice for a slew of Oilers goals and is neither scoring himself or on ice when the Panthers do hit the back of the net. A proven playoff scorer, Verhaeghe has just one goal in his past seven games dating to the conference final. The Panthers need more from him, and soon.
Stuart Skinner made 29 saves to help keep the Oilers season alive Tuesday. He made some key stops early in the first period and then was solid in the second with 14 saves on 16 shots when the Panthers surged. He can’t be faulted on any of the three goals allowed and again outplayed Sergei Bobrovsky.
For someone who played 21:58, it was a very quiet night for Sam Reinhart in Game 5. He was held off the score sheet again — the 57-goal scorer has just one goal in the series — and managed just three shots on goal and was minus-2. Reinhart needs to get untracked, especially on the power play, where he scored 27 times in the regular season.
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Originally posted on Sportsnaut
Published: 3 months ago
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