Secondary scoring is great, especially in the Stanley Cup Final, but when Corey Perry has your only goals over the last 88 minutes of on-ice action, well, that isn’t great. After splitting the games in Edmonton, the Florida Panthers returned to their friendly confines and proceeded to smack the Oilers up and down the ice for 60 minutes in Game 3. The 6-1 final score was indicative of how much the Panthers dominated the game. The eye test matched the stat test in a game that ended with the visitors trying their best to goad their hosts into fight after fight.
Edmonton is left wondering what they can do to change the momentum of the series after they were beat in every aspect of the game on Monday. When a team kills off eight power plays, it normally indicates a productive, if somewhat busy, night on the penalty kill. Yet, Florida still managed three power play goals on the night, including two in the third period that put the game out of reach. The Panthers are now clicking at 29.4% in the series as they are repeatedly making Edmonton pay for their indiscretions.
The Oilers have the firepower to overcome a shoddy penalty kill, in fact that has been their modus operandi for much of the postseason. The problem lies in the fact that Florida is dominating them at even strength as well. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Panthers are outscoring the Oilers 8-4 at 5v5 while dominating in scoring chances (88-69). To their credit, Connor McDavid and his mates are holding even in high-danger chances (34-32), but Sergei Bobrovsky is back to his old tricks after an average Game 1. Officer Bob has a .957 SV% on 5-v-5 high-danger chances. Stu Skinner and Calvin Pickard haven’t been able to match that as they’ve posted an .875 SV% on shots in their kitchen.
Edmonton didn’t necessarily need Skinner to be spectacular in order to win, but they needed him to be at least average. Through three games he’s posted a -2.17 GSAx in all situations (Bobrovsky is at 3.76). His teammates haven’t helped him out, but Skinner has to be better. The game-opening goal in Game 3 is a perfect example.
Yes, it’s a chaotic, broken play, but he can’t get caught out in no-man’s land like that. He just drifted out of the crease and then wildly misread the play as Brad Marchand was in no position to shoot the puck, but Skinner flung himself toward the middle of the ice, which gave The King of the Rats an open lane to shoot. If you give the Panthers a chance, they’re going to take advantage of it.
They have also made it their mission to limit the effect of McDavid on the series. The league’s best player has five points in the series, but they are all assists, and four of them have come on the power play. He has zero goals on 18 shot attempts, 13 individual scoring chances, and a series-leading 1.85 iXG in 87:10 of all-around ice time. The line of McDavid, Perry, and Leon Draisaitl have been on the ice for a team-leading 25:00 of 5v5 time, and in that time they have 16 of Edmonton’s 69 scoring chances (23%) but have scored the same amount of goals as the fans crowded outside of Rogers Arena – zero.
We saw Florida do this to the Lightning in Round One as they shut down Nikita Kucherov. They did it the next round as Auston Matthews had one goal and three assists in 143:34 of ice time. Against Carolina in the Eastern Conference Final, they pretty much shut everyone down, but especially Andrei Svechnikov, who had three assists in 89:54. They take away a team’s best player and dare his teammates to beat them. Over the past three seasons it’s been a pretty solid game plan.
Edmonton is still in the series, but the end could come quickly if they don’t right the ship. A pessimist might even point out that they’re kind of lucky to not be down 3-0. Game 1 could have, and probably should have, gone against them. Florida controlled much of the game, but uncharacteristically blew a third-period lead. Even in overtime, it took a power play goal for Edmonton to win.
“I don’t think our best has shown up all series long, but it’s coming,” is how McDavid put it after the Game 3 loss. He speaks the truth, but the Oilers need their best to come pretty quickly. Much like the Lightning series, Game 4 is going to be the key game in this series. Had Tampa Bay held onto that third-period lead and tied the series up heading back to Tampa, things might have played out differently. Edmonton is in the same situation. If this series is 2-2, they have the momentum with two of the final three games on home ice. If it’s 3-1 Florida, then the Stanley Cup is staying in the Sunshine State.
