EDMONTON — There’s a metaphor to be found inside the fact that, in the biggest game of the Connor McDavid era, the Edmonton Oilers won a game on two goals, 10 shots on net, a perfect penalty kill and the best goaltending this town has seen since Rollie the Goalie roamed the crease back in 2006.
That a team known for offence just became the only club in National Hockey League history to clinch a series on a 10-shot night.
Mix in a McDavid moment, as he walked perennial Norris Trophy candidate Miro Heiskanen to open the scoring, a building/costume party that only a Canadian fan base can produce, and a team now entering its ninth playoff series in three years, and you get what the Oilers have become:
The Western Conference champions and Stanley Cup finalists, winners in six games over the favoured Dallas Stars after grinding out a 2-1 victory on a sloppy, muddy track Sunday night.
“There were a lot of things said about this team,” began head coach Kris Knoblauch. “That we couldn’t do this because our goaltending wasn’t good enough. We can’t win because we rely on scoring goals, and we need four or five every night. We don’t check well enough. We don’t have a good enough penalty kill.
“You can’t have success unless you’re good at all those things. We don’t win this game unless Stu is terrific.”
Stu, of course, would be Stuart Skinner, the beleaguered local kid who got the hook for two games of the Vancouver series, and has been stunningly good ever since.
He sat at home, a seven-year-old budding goalie, watching Dwayne Roloson take his Oilers to Game 7 against Carolina back in ’06. The goalie carousel has spun so fast in this market, however, that when a teenaged Skinner found his way into the nosebleeds at old Rexall Place during the Decade of Darkness, Ryan-Nugent Hopkins became his favourite Oiler.
Today, Skinner, Nugent-Hopkins and the rest of the Oilers penalty killers can say they did not give up a goal in either Round 1 or 3, currently riding a team-record 28 consecutive kills that helped them win the special teams battle five goals to zero in this series.
And it is Skinner himself who stood in the crease when that final horn went off, and a city went off even louder.
“If you’d have told me this five, six years ago, I’d probably tell you you’re crazy,” said Skinner. “Honestly, moments like this, it’s very cool. It’s a lot more than cool.”
Since returning from his two-game re-set in Round 2, Skinner’s goals-against average is 1.81, with a saves percentage of .920. he stopped 34 of 35 shots Sunday in as tense a pressure cooker as you’ll ever experience, outplaying Jake Oettinger in this series — against the prediction of the entire hockey world.
“We’re not sitting up here talking about a win if it wasn’t for him. We’re on a plane to Dallas if it wasn’t for Stu,” said McDavid, who fittingly had a goal and a primary assist — both on the power play — in this 2-1 win. “He’s still such a young goalie (25), but he’s gone through so much.
“A lot of people doubt him. A lot of people don’t say the nicest things about him,” McDavid continued. “But he is an elite goaltender in this league and he showed that tonight.”
The Edmonton Oilers are going to the Stanley Cup.
Swish that around in your mouth for a while, for all those who questioned “wasting McDavid’s prime years.” Or the Holland haters, who said he’d never be able to build enough around his stars to have a proper team.
Or certainly, a team that could win a game of this magnitude, in a style so foreign to the DNA of this franchise.
“Last year, after the Vegas series (a Round 2 Edmonton loss),” said Mattias Ekholm, “I stood here and I said, ‘Vegas won some games they didn’t deserve. But they did it because they did the right things for longer periods of times.’
“Tonight we did that. We have learned that we can not score six every night,” Ekholm said. “In the L.A. series (Round 1), we won 1-0 in their barn. Tonight was one of those games.”
For a team that opened their season with an 8-1 shellacking at the hands of the Canucks, then went 2-9-1 and found themselves in 31st place with a new coach walking in the door, to reach a Stanley Cup Final is Disney Channel stuff.
“This year felt like 10 years, to be honest,” said Zach Hyman, who wired the game-winner over Oettinger’s shoulder on a first-period power play. “You go into the year with the expectation that you’re one of the best teams in the league, you’re going to go to the Stanley Cup, and all of a sudden, 15 games into the season, you’re second last (in the NHL) and it’s like, ‘What happened?!? What’s going on?’
“You build character, you build strength mentally — whether you think it at the time or not, it does. Every playoff series you play, you gain experience. And you’re able to play in moments like today, when we’re getting absolutely shelled and it’s 2-1 with 10 minutes left.
“Maybe another year we crack and they score. But not this year.”
Not this year.
Not in the year that the McDavid Era found its way to a Stanley Cup Final.
Finally.
