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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
EDMONTON, Alberta — Stuart Skinner hasn’t given up on the Oilers’ Stanley Cup dream.
“It’s disappointing to be losing 3-0. We have to let that reality sink in,” the goaltender said after the Florida Panthers’ 4-3 victory in Game 3 of the Cup Final on Thursday night. “I’m not really sure what the statistics are on the comeback, but if anyone can do it, it’s Oil.”
Here are the stats: Teams that win 3-0 in a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final have won 27 of 28 series. The only exception was in 1942, when the Toronto Maple Leafs rallied to defeat the Detroit Red Wings.
Of those 28 series, 20 of them ended in a sweep. The Panthers are trying to sweep the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since the Red Wings eliminated the Washington Capitals in four games in 1998.
Even if the Oilers manage to send the series back to South Florida with a Game 4 win, 25 of those 28 series have ended in no more than five games.
But the Oilers still believe.
“I think we’ve shown that we can beat this team,” said coach Kris Knoblauch, whose Oilers are now 0-5-0 against the Panthers this season.
“I think there’s a lot of faith in that,” he said. “It’s not like they’re outplaying us and we’re just saying, ‘That team is better than us.’ We can get a lot of wins. We’ve proven that, I don’t think there’s any doubt in our room.”
Knoblauch pointed to two eight-game winning streaks in the regular season and a 16-game winning streak from late December to January.
“There is frustration because we are depressed, but there is a difference between frustration and quitting,” he said. “There is absolutely no option to give up. There is a belief that we can do it, so we just have to keep pushing.”
Edmonton pressed on in the third period on Thursday, getting greasy goals from Philip Broberg and Ryan McLeod to cut the Panthers’ lead to 4-3. But the key takeaway from Game 3 was that the Oilers were down 4-1 entering the third period, at home, in a must-win game, against a team with a plus-15 goal differential in the final quarter of the postseason. . .
Their undoing came in an embarrassing 6:19 stretch into the second period, when Florida scored three goals. The Oilers had just tied the game at 1 on a breakaway goal by Warren Foegele. But a Skinner turnover allowed forward Eetu Luostarinen to find Vladimir Tarasenko to make it 2-1, deflating the crowd at 9:12.
It was 3-1 at 13:57, when solid forechecking by Matthew Tkachuk helped force a Darnell Nurse turnover that Sam Bennett put into the net for his seventh of the playoffs.
Aleksander Barkov capped the scoring for Florida at 15:31, taking advantage of a 2-on-1 opportunity that the Oilers allowed to start deep in their frontcourt.
“After they got the second one, they just got on a roll. We let them take that momentum and keep going,” Skinner said. “They had two quicker ones. Just silly mistakes that don’t have to happen.”
The mistakes piled up for Edmonton. The goals of their star players no. Foegele, Broberg, McLeod and Mattias Ekholm all have goals. The playoffs’ top five scorers (forwards Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and defenseman Evan Bouchard) don’t.
Those five players also run the Oilers’ power play, who have been powerless in this series against Florida’s penalty kill, which is 10 of 10. Edmonton’s power play came into the series clicking over 37%, the best in the postseason.
McDavid has scored, assisting on three of the Oilers’ four goals in the series. The Oilers star is on pace to become the second player since 1967-68 to have a point on at least half of his team’s goals in the postseason. The only other player to do that was Wayne Gretzky for the Oilers in 1988.
But the other players have yet to score a point in the Stanley Cup Final. Draisaitl took responsibility for his surprising lack of production.
“Yes, it’s very frustrating, of course,” said Draisaitl, who reached the final with 28 points in 18 games. “I pride myself on being good in the playoffs and playing well and I can’t seem to do anything. So yeah, obviously I have to look in the mirror and try to be better.”
He said the Oilers made it too easy for Florida in Game 3.
“We shot ourselves in the foot a little bit today,” he said. “They made some individual and collective mistakes that they immediately took advantage of.”
But like the rest of his team, he still believes they can bounce back, against all odds.
“We’re a good offensive team,” Draisaitl said. “They’re doing a good job, but we’re still improving our appearance. It’s just that when you’re chasing the game for a lot of the night, it’s hard to come back. It’s a steep hill right now, obviously. There’s no choice but to go game game by game, try to get a victory in the fourth game and continue from there.
