Stanley
Cup Final
EDMONTON — Playing good defense, as Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl will have you know their team does, is one thing. The way their Edmonton Oilers have been closing out games is something else entirely.
For the fourth straight game, the Oilers held their opponent to no more than four shots on net in the third period as they opened the Stanley Cup Final with a 4-3 win over the Florida Panthers.
Advertisement
They allowed four shots in each of the last three contests to close out the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference final. They gave up just two of them over the final 20 minutes of regulation on Wednesday. They kept the Panthers to eight shots over the final 39:29 until Draisaitl’s overtime goal ended the proceedings.
That’s what you call defending at the most critical time.
“There’s a confidence in the team, knowing that we can get this done if we do it right,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “And they’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Wednesday’s contest was the only one of the four where the Oilers trailed after the second intermission. But it’s not like that was the case for long. Mattias Ekholm converted a pass from McDavid 6:33 into the third to tie the score. The Oilers dominated until the next buzzer.
Per Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers had an 80 percent expected goal share for the 19:13 at five-on-five and had a 4-0 advantage in high-danger chances.
“We’re a year older, which is an experience you can’t teach unless you experience it,” said Oilers assistant coach Paul Coffey, who runs the defense.
The last four games are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the way the Oilers have locked things down in the third period.
They’ve outscored the opposition 27-15 in that scenario. The plus-12 differential is the best in the NHL, now one goal better than the Panthers thanks to Ekholm’s marker. They own a plus-17 shots differential in third periods in the playoffs.
The Oilers also have a 24-shot advantage through parts of four overtime frames — by far tops in the NHL. They have a 4-0 record in that situation, thanks to three goals from Draisaitl and another from Kasperi Kapanen to complete the Vegas series.
Considering they’ve won 13 of their last 15 games, score effects haven’t hurt the Oilers one bit. They’re not just closing the door. They’re slamming it shut.
Advertisement
“We’re decent when we get a lead and when we commit to it,” Coffey said. “That starts in the back end. If the back end is no good, the team’s not going to be any good. The forwards, and everybody, plays their part.”
Really, the Oilers have had two poor third periods in the playoffs — the first second game of the opening round against the Los Angeles Kings and Game 1 of the West final. Those two frames account for eight of the 15 goals against during that 20-minute segment, and one of them was into an empty net.
They stormed back in the third in Games 3 and 4 against Los Angeles. They snuffed out the Kings in Game 5. They largely kept the Golden Knights at bay in the twilight stages of contests. They thwarted the Stars down the stretch in every game other than the opener.
“We find our way, get better throughout the game,” defenseman Jake Walman said. “Maybe in crunchtime we dial it in a little bit more, but ideally we’d like to do that from the start of every game.”
Coffey, the Hockey Hall of Fame blueliner and former Oilers great, attributes part of the late-game success to the group’s collective adaptability.
The Oilers mostly ran the same three pairings last season, Coffey’s first behind the bench after replacing Dave Manson in November 2023: Ekholm and Evan Bouchard, Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci, and Brett Kulak with Vincent Desharnais. They switched up the pairs last February and trade-deadline acquisition Troy Stecher got some stand-in duty, but that was a mere trial run. It wasn’t until midway through the Western final when they inserted Philip Broberg that pairings were put in a blender.
This season, there are a few reasons why the Oilers have used several different duos. They lacked a true second-pairing guy on the right side at the start, which resulted in them using a few partners next to Nurse — predominantly Stecher and the lefty Kulak on his off side.
Advertisement
“Everybody plays everybody,” Coffey said. “That was my mindset at the start of the year. There’s going to be certain things that happen in the game where you got to play with somebody different.”
The combination of injuries and bringing in Walman and John Klingberg in the second half only added to that.
“It’s boring for me to have six guys that just play with each other (on three set pairs),” Coffey said. “That’s a long time just standing behind the bench. We want to mix things up. We want to challenge guys. We want to make sure they have fun.”
The situation has been more stable over the last two games since Ekholm returned from a lower-body injury. He’s been featured with Bouchard, Nurse and Kulak have mostly skated together, and Walman and Klingberg have kept their partnership.
But, as Coffey said, he likes to keep them on their toes. He had Walman and Bouchard together for shifts on Wednesday. Same goes for Ekholm and Klingberg.
“I was trying to get some kind of spark and challenge them at the same time,” Coffey said.
For all the good with the way the Oilers have played late in games around their net, for how well they’ve pushed the pace, there’s always room for improvement.
The Panthers actually had the edge before at five-on-five in overtime before Tomas Nosek’s puck-over-glass penalty. They had a 62 percent expected goals share and a 4-2 advantage in high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick. A great save by Stuart Skinner on Carter Verhaeghe five minutes into the extra period saved the game.
So, it’s not like they’re all high and mighty. Far from it.
“We’ve got to be better,” Coffey said, “because we know they’re going to be better.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Daniel Nugent-Bowman is a staff writer who covers the Edmonton Oilers for The Athletic. Daniel has written about hockey for Sportsnet, The Hockey News, Yahoo Canada Sports and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Follow Daniel on Twitter @DNBsports
