In Game 5 of the Western Conference Final at American Airlines Center on Thursday (May 29), the Edmonton Oilers defeated the Dallas Stars by a score of 6-3 to win the best-of-seven series and advance to the Stanley Cup Final.
Related: 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs Conference Finals Hub
Edmonton got one goal each from Mattias Janmark, Evander Kane, Kasperi Kapanen, Connor McDavid, Corey Perry and Jeff Skinner. Jeff Robertson scored twice for the Stars, who also got a goal from Roope Hintz.
Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner made 14 saves in a winning effort. Stars goalie Jake Oettinger was pulled after allowing two goals on Edmonton’s first two shots, and replaced by Casey DeSmith, who stopped 17 of the 20 shots he faced.
The Oilers are the first Western Conference team to reach the NHL championship round in consecutive seasons since the Detroit Red Wings in 2008 and 2009. Here’s how they did it:
Janmark and Perry were both members of the Stars when Dallas last reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2020, but on Thursday, the Edmonton forwards were a big part of ensuring their former team wouldn’t be playing for the championship this year. Perry scored just 2:31 into the game, and Janmark followed up with a goal at 7:09 of the first period to give Edmonton an early 2-0 lead.
Perry is now tied for the team lead with seven goals in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, after only scoring once in the entire postseason last year. Janmark, meanwhile, now has three goals in the 2025 Playoffs, which is one more than he had during the entire 2024-25 regular season.
Dallas coach Pete DeBoer’s controversial decision to take Oettinger out of the game will probably go down in Texas hockey infamy. The Stars’ All-Star netminder was hung out to dry by his teammates on Edmonton’s first two goals, then unceremoniously given the hook by an angry Dallas bench boss.
With all due respect to DeSmith, the 33-year-old goaltender is nowhere near the calibre of Oettinger, and the Oilers took advantage of that fact. Less than one minute after DeSmith entered the game, Jeff Skinner tallied at 8:07 to put the visitors ahead by a score of 3-0.
DeSmith didn’t have much of a chance on the fourth Oilers goal, coming on a jaw-dropping play by McDavid at 14:28 of the second period, but he should never have allowed Edmonton’s fifth goal by Kane, which bounced off the skate of Stars blueliner Esa Lindell at 3:21 of the third.
The tallies by Kane and McDavid were gut-punches to the Stars, who fell into a deep hole and spent the rest of the game desperately trying to climb out of it.
McDavid’s goal came only 121 seconds after Hintz had scored to pull the Stars within one goal, at 3-2. Kane’s goal came just 2:43 after Robertson notched his second goal of the night to again pull Dallas within one, at 4-3.
The Stars deserve a lot of credit for fighting back throughout Game 5, but every time they got close, the Oilers squashed their hopes with a quick response that sucked the life out of American Airlines Center.
Thursday marked the return to Edmonton’s lineup of two Oilers who have not been seen for quite a while: defenceman Mattias Ekholm, who had been sidelined by injury since April 11, and Jeff Skinner, who had been a healthy scratch since suiting up for Game 1 of Round 1 against the Los Angeles Kings on April 21.
By now, everyone is very familiar with the story of Jeff Skinner, who waited a record 15 years to play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, only to be sent to the press box after one game. The 33-year-old finally drew back into the lineup on Thursday and provided one of the feel-good moments of the 2025 postseason when he scored his first career NHL playoff goal.
This might have been a cameo appearance for Jeff Skinner. The season-ending injury to Zach Hyman opened up a spot on Edmonton’s forward lines for Game 5, and with Oilers forward Connor Brown expected to return for the start of the championship series, there’s a very good chance that Jeff Skinner is coming back out of the lineup. But at the very least, the veteran winger can now say he scored a Stanley Cup Playoff goal and had a role in helping his team reach the Final.
Edmonton now faces the Florida Panthers in a rematch of last year’s classic seven-game championship series. The puck drops for Game 1 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final just after 6 p.m. MT on Wednesday (June 4) at Rogers Place.
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