The Edmonton Oilers Will Lose Until They Stop Beating Themselves

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Hockey is a brutal game. In a moment of confusion or indecision, the puck is in the back of your net. Hockey happens fast. One bounce of the puck, one small slip and your Stanley Cup dreams will be ruined.

This is the story of the 2024 Edmonton Oilers. A brilliant attacking team, a solid enough defensive team, and an incredibly resilient team, but one that continues to be dogged by the most mundane mistakes, and in critical moments of a must-win third game. , mundane mistakes of their best players.

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It’s already late in the first half and the Oilers have three men behind against three Florida attackers for the first goal against. Edmonton’s talisman, Connor McDavid, moves toward the puck instead of his own check, Florida d-man Gustav Forsling. Forsling is unmarked. He takes the pass from Aleksander Barkov and with time and space to pick his play, he makes a pass to Sam Reinhart, who directs it past Stuart Skinner.

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Next up is Skinner, the comeback hero of Edmonton’s win over Dallas, now called on in the second period of Game 3 to make a basic play, nothing special, just controlling a shot behind the net. But Skinner can’t control it. He spins the bouncing puck and gets caught in the crease of it. A Panthers forward lunges at him and, a split second later, Vladimir Taransenko smashes him into the empty goal. It’s a back-breaking mistake, the kind of goalie mistake and talented goal that a team rarely recovers from in a game, even a team with Edmonton’s spirit and skill.

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Five minutes later it’s Darnell Nurse, again Darnell Nurse, who has had long stretches of strong two-way play for the Oilers over the years, but whose struggles are epic in this playoff season. Under Florida’s strong control, he attempts to skate the puck down the middle of the ice and then pass it, but Matthew Tkachuk intercepts his pass. Mocked in the first period by the Edmonton crowd with a chant of “Turtle!” all the way up the court, Tkachuk quickly moves the puck through Nurse to Sam Bennett. Bennett hits a wicked shot to make it 3-1 Florida.

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Finally it’s Mattias Ekholm, oh so steady Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton’s most reliable two-way defense man for most of the season, but now he’s stuck watching the play unfold on the Florida end and, just by a moment, watches for too long as Florida breaks apart. in a 2 on 1. The Panthers executed to perfection, Evan Rodrigues beat Evan Bouchard on the pass, Barkov finished with a nasty shot that beat Skinner, 4-1 Florida.

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And, despite an improbable comeback that came on a monster save by Sergei Bobrovsky when Edmonton’s Ryan McLeod tied the game, the Oilers lost 4-3. Now they are losing three games to none in the Stanley Cup Final. Only once in the history of the Stanley Cup Finals has a team come back from such a dark place.

Edmonton had 19 Grade A shots to Florida’s eight in Game 3, but Bobrovsky the Brilliant finished off what Edmonton’s mistakes started.

That’s how the Oilers played. That’s how they lost.

And that’s how the Oilers will keep losing until they stop beating themselves up.

In the cult of hockey

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STAPLES: Oilers must embrace their “inner rat”

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