The Edmonton Oilers head back to Edmonton down 2–0 to the Florida Panthers in their final round series and the vibes are not great around the team. They played really well in the first game, peppering Sergei Bobrovsky with over 40 shots, but couldn’t beat the Russian netminder. Then in Game 2, they were the second best team all night long, and the Panthers came away with an unfortunate but deserved win.
Now it’s back to Edmonton and time for a series reset. Coach Kris Knoblauch has worked his magic a few times over the playoffs, helping to calm the team down when they were behind or help them team remain focussed when under fire by opposing teams. This will be a new situation for the team, who has not fallen behind by two games at any point in the playoffs.
However on top of a good Knoblauch pep talk, the team needs to focus on specific items to help them claw their way back into the series. Going into Game 3, here are the three areas that the Oilers should exploit to win.
Line-matching at home
Having lost the last two games in Florida, the Oilers are now back home and can use the last change to their advantage. The home team has the last change, giving them the opportunity to match their line against whomever their opponent puts on the ice, and this is where Knoblauch will need to exploit his team’s strengths.
The Oilers have two elite top lines, with Connor McDavid centring the one and Leon Draisaitl centring the other. The Panthers did a good job of limiting McDavid, matching Aleksander Barkov against him, but now that the Oilers are at home, they can play their captain away from him.
While he hasn’t been incredible through the playoffs, McDavid did have the only high danger chance at 5v5 in the second game and led the team in high danger chances in all situations in the first game. He’s the best player in the NHL by some distance, and giving him free reign against the Panthers’ third and fourth lines is going to be a treat to watch.
The team does need more from Draisaitl and the second line, which has collectively not looked great so far this round. In the last game, Draisaitl registered just one shot attempt at 5v5, which didn’t hit the net. The line combined for three shots on net at 5v5 all game long. Simply not good enough.
The Oilers need to line match effectively in games 3 and 4, putting their top two lines against Florida’s depth lines. While the Panthers are a really deep team, their third and fourth line are not nearly as good as McDavid and Draisatil. Given this opportunity, the team will also need their stars to exploit their opportunities and find a way to beat Bobrovsky.
Special teams back to normal
After stopping 34 straight power play chances, the Oilers finally conceded a goal in the last game against the Panthers. And look, if the Oilers can go 33/34 on the penalty kill, that’s a win every single time. The problem is that they allowed seven scoring chances against in the last game on the man advantage, five of which were high danger chances.
What made the Oilers’ penalty kill so effective for so long was that they were super aggressive in both the neutral zone as well as in their own zone. They used active sticks in passing lanes, pressured the puck carrier effectively, and forced turnovers which they took down the ice to get scoring chances of their own or to eat up valuable minutes on the penalty kill. They simply did not do any of that in the last game.
On the man advantage, they simply couldn’t get it done in the last game. In 5.28 of time with the man advantage, they had one shot on goal, and zero scoring chances directed at the net. While it was a frustrating game, with inconsistent refereeing and very peculiar calls, but that is simply no excuse for putting up a power play as poor as they had in two and a bit attempts.
This is where games are won and lost. If the Oilers can figure out how to score on the man advantage, or at least keep the puck out of their own net when penalized, they can utilize their superstars to win the next game.
Getting to the net
Tied in with all of this is the need to generate quality looks. Looking back at the last game against the Dallas Stars, the Oilers allowed 34 shots on net, but were really good at limiting high quality looks. Dallas ended with just seven high danger chances that game at 5v5, while the Oilers had five.
While the Oilers looked really good in Game 1, generating 13 high danger chances at 5v5, they couldn’t muster a single one in Game 2. The Panthers kept them to the outside, controlling the pace of play and limiting the Oilers’ stars to shooting from the perimeter.
This is not how the Oilers have thrived to this point, and if they are to win the game and come back in the series, they are going to need to find a way to the front of the net. Zach Hyman and Draisaitl have been particularly effective at this, with the former doing his best work from right in front of the net. The Oilers need to find a way to feed Hyman in his office and generate more looks from in front of the net.
The x-factor
Perhaps most of all, they need McDavid to be McDavid. The highlight reel plays that he is so used to creating, just like the unbelievable play to deke Miro Heiskanen in Game 6 against the Stars, simply have not come out in this round. Regardless of the depth that they have now, this team lives and dies with McDavid.
Game 3 feels like the make-or-break game for the Oilers. If they win this one, they have life in the series and can pull this one back to even with one more win after that. But if they lose, and the prayers in Edmonton would hope they don’t, this series feels like a foregone conclusion.
This is the biggest game in Edmonton since 2006, and it’s a game where the Oilers need to be at their very best. Fingers crossed they are.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
