EDMONTON — It’s not supposed to be easy.
It took these teams nine periods of hockey to decide the opening two games of this Stanley Cup Final, and after a double OT, 5-4 loss in Game 2, the Edmonton Oilers will lean on the experience they’ve gleaned from 13 playoff series over the past four seasons.
It’s a best-of-five for the Stanley Cup now. No time for pouting.
“There’s going to be some disappointment,” counselled Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “But we’ve had the mentality, no matter what happens — bad game, close game, overtime, heartbreaking, easy, whatever it is — we put it behind us and we get ready for the next one.
“You learn in the playoffs, things don’t always go your way. Sometimes it works in your favour, sometimes it doesn’t.”
With two overtime games, we could be looking at a 2-0 series lead for either team. But on balance, a 1-1 tie as the series jets to Florida is an accurate depiction of the play through Games 1 and 2.
Still, as the teams battled into the 88th minute Friday, that precious goal became more and more gigantic — the difference between a tied series and a 2-0 lead for the Oilers.
“We’re on the attack, we had a great look, (Mattias Ekholm) comes in there and takes a slap shot,” said Knoblauch. “If it hits the net, we’re celebrating. Unfortunately, it goes around, it’s a difficult read and everyone’s going one direction.
“Now it’s coming back the other way. It’s just unfortunate it worked out that way.”
The cliché is that, in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it doesn’t matter whether you lose 5-4 in double overtime or 7-1. A loss is a loss is a loss, right?
But in the moment, this one stung. It was an unfortunate bit of happenstance as Ekholm’s blast missed to the far side, and Anton Lundell sprung Brad Marchand for a breakaway — his second breakaway goal of the game on Stuart Skinner.
In the end, it was a lot of work for nothing, from an Edmonton standpoint. But the bright side would be that they got the overtime break in Game 1, or the Oilers could be in an 0-2 hole for the second year in a row.
“We lost with .4 seconds left a couple of series ago (against Vegas). Those are tough,” said Corey Perry, by way of comparison. “You go home and you can think about it, but (Saturday) you get some rest, get on the plane and get ready for Game 3. They’re a good team and they are going to push us to the max and we’re going to push them to the max.
“It’s frustrating right now, but we’re in the Final for a reason.”
Perry brilliantly sent this one to overtime when he scored with the goalie pulled and just 18 ticks left on the clock. Against a Florida team that lugged a perfect 31-0 playoff record under head coach Paul Maurice when leading after 20 or 40 minutes, Edmonton has forced the steady Panthers to cough up leads in both games thus far.
“It’s two really good teams. It’s never going to be easy,” said Draisaitl, who scored his third of the series on a miraculous setup by Connor McDavid. “We need to regroup and be ready for Game 3.”
Part of that “regrouping” will involve some further investigative work on how best to deal with a Florida forecheck that simply took over Game 2 in the second period.
We expect both teams to have their pushes during a game, but this was much more than that. With the long change in effect in the second frame, Florida absolutely took over the game for almost an entire period — for the second game in a row.
It’s fair to say that this one element of the matchup — the Oilers’ ability to solve a Panthers forecheck and break the puck out more cleanly — could be the axis around which this series turns.
The good news for Oilers fans is that in every series thus far, they’ve solved their tactical issues and won the vast majority of games in the back half of the series.
“I think we just lost our legs a little bit, we weren’t as quick to recover pucks,” Draisaitl said of that second period. “They’re going to have their push, of course. It’s something to look at.”
It was a quiet Oilers dressing room, with equipment bags being packed for the morning flight to Florida.
Sure, a 2-0 lead would have made for a better night’s sleep. But as it turned out, the red light at the other end was lit, and now it’s Edmonton’s turn to punch back.
“At this time of year, you’ve got to move on,” Draisaitl said. “There’s no time, thinking about it for too long.
“Obviously it stings right now, but we’ve got to move on.”
