DALLAS — Dare to dream.
The Edmonton Oilers have taken control of this Western Conference Final, going up 3-2 on the Dallas Stars with a stunning and decisive 3-1 win here on Friday.
They’ll come home now to Rogers Place, for what should be an eardrum-splitting Sunday night, with an opportunity to qualify for the Oilers’ first Stanley Cup Final since 2006.
It has been, as they say, a process.
“We’ve built something throughout the year,” said Game 5 hero Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “You work on it every day, and you build confidence throughout the season. You win games, you string some games together, and you believe in the group.
“I believe in our ability to win on any given night.”
That Nugent-Hopkins, the longest-serving Oiler, would pop two goals in this crucial series-slanting game is apropos. The Stars were supposed to be able to win this series based on their superior depth, a team that didn’t need the kinds of superstars that Edmonton has, because of the sum of their prodigious arsenal of talent.
But it was neither Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl who did the scoring in this game. It was Nugent-Hopkins, with two power-play goals. It was a seeing-eye shot from young defenceman Philip Broberg that made the score 3-0, after winger Evander Kane had stepped into the circle and won a crucial draw.
It’s a team game that is separating these teams as this series wears on, and the team that’s separating isn’t Dallas. In fact, there’s a growing acknowledgement that when the Oilers play their best hockey, the Stars can not match it.
“I truly believe that our best beats anyone’s best,” Draisaitl said after the morning skate. “It’s just a matter of consistently playing that way, and that’s taxing. To play at your best every single night, every single shift, that’s really hard to do.
“But I think we’re finding our way a little bit.”
And the goaltending battle that was supposed to favour Dallas so heavily?
For the second straight game, Jake Oettinger was the second best goalie on the ice behind Stuart Skinner, who had his shutout thwarted only by Wyatt Johnston’s masterful tip with 5:51 to play in the game. Skinner gave his team nothing but big saves, on yet another night where he saw very little rubber, but faced a mittful of Grade A chances.
“Sometimes it’s harder playing in games like that, just trying to do your very best to stay mentally engaged, physically engaged,” Skinner said after his 19-save night. “(But) in my favour, I’ve been able to have a lot of games like that, the way that we play.”
The way the Oilers have played for the last five periods — taking the momentum swings out of this series and replacing them with a steady, ceaseless domination — bodes well for a Canadian city that hasn’t hosted a game the magnitude of Sunday’s in 18 years.
They’ll have to be better at home, Edmonton, But boy, were these Oilers good here in Texas on Friday.
“If you’re going to draw up a road game, that’s what you want to do,” admitted Dallas head coach Pete DeBoer. “I know there have been big swings in this series, but as the series goes on those get harder and harder to (pull off).”
That old cliché “the toughest win is always the fourth one” exists for one simple reason. Because it is true.
But in a series that went back and forth through the first four games, split evenly among the Stars and Oilers, the 120 minutes of hockey played in Games 4 and 5 have fallen, conservatively, about 95-25 in the Oilers’ favour.
“We were able to put together two good games, but that’s all it is,” cautioned McDavid, who has matured into that captain who will not be seen to be thinking any further ahead than puck drop on Sunday night. “We’ve given ourselves an opportunity heading home to win a big game, but that’s all we’ve done.
“There’s a lot a lot of work to do.”
Slowly, a team that was not favoured in this series has wrested play away from Dallas, on so many fronts.
They’ve put seven pucks past Oettinger in the past two games, allowing just three goals against, and virtually all at even strength — another area where the Stars were thought to be superior.
In a series that had not seen a power-play goal through four games, Edmonton’s world-class power play broke through with two goals in Game 5 — after notching the game-winner two nights earlier while shorthanded.
And through two periods in Game 5 the Stars had just 10 shots on goal, as Edmonton walked into the home of the reigning World Series champion Texas Rangers and threw a near-perfect game at the Stars.
“Everybody was solid, right from the goalie on out,” McDavid said. “I thought everybody played real well.”
Even the Stars’ vaunted discipline showed cracks on Friday, as Dallas gave Edmonton three power plays for the first time in this series.
And now, we wait.
Forty-eight hours before they meet again, a trip to the Stanley Cup Final on the line for the Oilers.
“This is why we play,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “This is why we work so hard at our craft, to get ourselves in these situations. To be a part of a group like this. I mean, this is all you can ask for.
“We have an opportunity here.”
