Giving away goals has been an issue for the Oilers during the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, but they have been able to overcome it to this point. That may not be the case against the Panthers, who have taken advantage of numerous mistakes in the series so far and can win the Stanley Cup for the first time on Saturday.
“We can’t write everything down, every situation is different, every player is different, they have different levels of confidence in who they’re going up against,” Knoblauch said. “As coaches we want them to play a perfect game and it’s ridiculous to think they’re going to do that, we just have to find the balance between mistakes and making a play.”
Defenseman Darnell Nurse gave the puck away in Game 3 trying to throw a backhand pass in traffic, resulting in a goal by Sam Bennett to put Florida up 3-1 at 13:57 of the second period in a victory by 4-3.
In Game 2, Evan Bouchard put the puck on the stick of Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues in the slot, who quickly snapped it over goaltender Stuart Skinner’s shoulder to put Florida up 2-1 at 3: 11 of the third period on the road. to a 4-1 victory.
“The teams you play this late in the year make small mistakes seem bigger because they take advantage of them,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “It’s hard to make mistakes, whether it doesn’t end up in the back of the net or creates a big chance.
“What we talk about all the time is being patient and trusting that we don’t need to force anything and that we’ll eventually find a way to get through it.”
The Oilers hope to extend the series with their first win of the finals and reach Game 5 at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on Tuesday. If necessary, Game 6 would return to Edmonton next Friday.
The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs are the only team to come back from a 3-0 deficit in the finals to win the Stanley Cup. The other 27 teams in the situation lost the series, 20 of them in sweeps.
“The encouraging thing about this is this series is 3-0, but it doesn’t feel like a 3-0 series,” Oilers forward Zach Hyman said. “For the most part, we are controlling the game and there are times in the game when we give freebees and they don’t, they are playing tight.
“But having said that, cleaning up those things and in each of those games, we felt like we had a chance to win.”
The last time Edmonton lost three games in a row was in the regular season: at home to the Tampa Bay Lightning on December 14 and to Florida on December 16, and then on the road to the New York Islanders on December 19.
Following the three-game losing streak, the Oilers won 16 in a row, one shy of the NHL record set by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992-93.
“We’re going to take it one game at a time, and if there’s any team that can do this, it’s this team, I firmly believe that,” Hyman said. “There is something in this team that we do not give up.”
Edmonton is leaning on all the adversity it has been through to this point to help extend the series. The Oilers have faced elimination in these playoffs before, losing 3-2 in the best-of-7 Western Conference Second Round to the Vancouver Canucks. The Oilers won the final two games of the series to advance to the Western Conference finals, where they defeated the Dallas Stars in six games.
“There’s no more room for error and when there’s no more room for error, we respond and we have all year,” Hyman said. “We have done it in these playoffs, we lost 3-2 against Vancouver and there was no more room for error and we probably played two of our best games of the year, so we are going to respond and that’s it. .”
