Monday's matchup was all Florida as the defending champions take a 2-1 lead in the Stanley Cup Final
SUNRISE, FL – After two tightly-contested matchups that both required overtime and were split by the two teams, the Stanley Cup Final was bound to swing in one side’s favour eventually.
And unfortunately for the Oilers, it wasn’t for them in Game 3 on Monday as the Florida Panthers flexed their defending champion muscles to the tune of a 6-1 victory at Amerant Bank Arena.
Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe each scored a goal and added an assist while Sergei Bobrovsky stopped all but one of the 33 Edmonton shots he faced in the victory, with Corey Perry scoring the lone Oilers goal.
The Blue & Orange will have a chance to regroup and turn the series into a best-of-three affair heading back to Oil Country with Game 4 going Thursday in Sunrise.
The penalty-filled opening frames continued in Game 3 as the teams combined for eight minor infractions, plus one more by the Oilers that didn’t come to fruition as the Panthers scored on a delayed call.
Monday’s eight minors came on the heels of 11 penalties in the first period of Game 2 and five in the opening 20 minutes of Game 1.
The delayed penalty came in the opening minute when Leon Draisaitl was going to get called for a high shot on Eetu Luostarinen, and it was recent Oilers killer Brad Marchand striking again with his third consecutive goal for the Panthers going back to Friday.
As Draisaitl clashed with Luostarinen in front, Anton Lundell tossed the puck into the crease from behind the net and Marchand emerged with it after a bit of a scramble, firing a wrist shot past a displaced Stuart Skinner just 56 seconds into the game.
From there, the steady onslaught of penalties took over and the Oilers managed to kill three in a row before Florida finally extended its lead on a Verhaeghe snipe with Viktor Arvidsson in the box for goaltender interference.
The Oilers PK may have gone 3-for-4, but their power play was blanked on its three opportunities.
Perry makes it 2-1 on the power play in the second period of Game 3
Blanked in the first but a bury to start the second as the Oilers opened the middle frame back on the PP and this time converted when Perry collected and converted the rebound from a low, hard point shot by Evan Bouchard for his ninth goal of the playoffs with 20 seconds left in the man advantage.
The 40-year-old ageless wonder now needs just one more goal to match the career-high 10 he tallied during the 2015 post-season as a member of the Anaheim Ducks.
Despite Perry’s continued heroics, the Panthers were quick to re-establish their two-goal lead as Reinhart scored his first since Game 7 of their second-round series vs. Toronto, taking a pass from Verhaeghe and sniping a shot through Jake Walman’s legs and over Skinner’s blocker-side shoulder.
Florida kept firing and extended their advantage to 4-1 at the 7:26 mark when Sam Bennett beat Skinner on a breakaway deke just seconds after creating a turnover in the defensive zone with a heavy hit on Oilers winger Vasily Podkolzin.
The Oilers outshot the Panthers 12-9 in the middle frame and were up 24-19 overall through 40 minutes, but the home team led even-strength scoring chances 12-5 and high-danger scoring chances 5-2 according to Natutal Stat Trick.
The rough night for the Oilers got rougher early in the final frame when Skinner shot the puck over the glass on a clearing attempt and given a delay-of-game penalty, which the Panthers turned into their second man-advantage marker of the net.
Matthew Tkachuk made a pass from behind the net to the high slot for Reinhart, who flipped a no-look backhand feed to Aaron Ekblad in the left circle for a one-timer that beat Skinner and chased the netminder from the game, as the Oilers inserted Calvin Pickard for the rest of the night.
Edmonton’s frustration finally boiled over just past the midway mark of the period as Trent Frederic gave Bennett some vicious cross-checks in the neutral zone and Darnell Nurse duked it out with Jonah Gadjovich. Mattias Ekholm was also involved with A.J. Greer, as the Panthers ended up with yet another power play from the melee.
A few more dust-ups followed before the final buzzer, with Nurse, Ekholm, Frederic, Evander Kane, Jake Walman and Kasperi Kapanen all receiving 10-minute misconducts to earn an early trip to the showers.
Evan Rodrigues added another power-play goal with 3:50 remaining while Florida was on a five-on-three advantage to round out the lopsided final score.
