EDMONTON – Next game wins.
Winning their third straight game, the Edmonton Oilers pulled even with the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final with a 5-1 win in Game 6 at Rogers Place on Friday.
Edmonton is just the third team to erase a 3-0 deficit in the Final in NHL history.
Game 7 is set for Monday at Amerant Bank Arena.
“We know we need to play better,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We have good moments in the games. We’ve got to take those to the next game and make the bad moments better.”
Taking advantage of a miscue by the Panthers, the Oilers opened the scoring when Warren Foegele took a perfect cross-ice pass from Leon Draisaitl and beat Sergei Bobrovsky from the left side of the net to make it 1-0 at 7:27 of the first period.
In the series, the team that scores first has gone 5-1.
Just 46 seconds into the second period, the Oilers doubled their lead when Adam Henrique teed up a pass from Mattias Janmark and buried a shot on a 2-on-1 rush to make it 2-0.
“They came out hungrier than us,” Panthers forward Carter Verhaeghe said. “They wanted it. That was kind of it. We didn’t really get to our forecheck off the start, and they took it to us. I think it’s for us to look at it and get better. We need some better starts.”
Just 10 seconds later, the Panthers thought they tied the game when Barkov scored, but the goal came off the board after a successful offside challenge by the Oilers.
Looking at the replay, the call was successful by the smallest of margins – if any.
“It may well have been offside,” said Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, who was visibly irate after the decision. “The lines person informed that it was the last clip that it was the last clip that they got where they made the decision that shows that it’s offside. I don’t have those with the video I’ve got at my bench. I was upset after the call based on what I see at my feet and what my video person looks at. There’s no way I would’ve challenge that if it was reversed. There’s no way I thought that you could conclusively say that was offside.”
Keeping the Panthers off the board, Stuart Skinner, who finished with 20 saves, stood tall for the Oilers when he robbed Barkov on a quick shot from the right circle on a 2-on-1 rush.
Shortly after officials opted to turn a blind eye to a trip on Sam Bennett, the Oilers tacked on another goal when Zach Hyman beat Bobrovsky on a breakaway to make it 3-0 at 18:20.
Giving the Panthers a spark at 1:28 of the third period, Barkov impressively stickhandled his way right through Edmonton’s defense before tucking a shot around Skinner to make it 3-1.
