*Photo from France24*
Series tied 3-3
They're back from the dead. Adam Henrique scored the game winning goal, Warren Foegele had a goal and an assist, and the Edmonton Oilers defeated the Florida Panthers with a 5-1 victory Friday night in Edmonton.
Once trailing 3-0 in the series, the Oilers have found new life and roared back for 3 straight wins, tying the series up and forcing a deciding 7th game. It'll be the first in 79 years to have a team that has rallied from a 3-0 deficit, but the Oilers look to be the first to complete the comeback and hoist the Stanley Cup.
All 4 forward lines had at least one player score a goal for the Oilers, with all 3 defensive pairings factoring into the scoring equation as well. Foegele was the only multi point player for the Oilers. A team maligned for lack of depth has seen it show up in spades this postseason.
Edmonton forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said "Of course, when you are down 3-0 you are going to say you believe, but we truly, truly believe in each other and the ability to just win one game at a time. That's all it comes down to. You don't need to worry about winning two, or three, or four, you just win that game, and I think we all have that belief that if we play our best on any given night, we can win, so that's been our focus, and we put ourselves back in a good spot."
The only goal of the first period came from Foegele, who put the Oilers ahead 1-0 with his 3rd goal of the playoffs. Just 46 seconds into the second period, Henrique doubled the lead to 2-0 with Mattias Janmark and Mattias Ekholm assisting. Nugent-Hopkins then got the lone assist on a breakaway goal from Zach Hyman to make it 3-0 Oilers.
Aleksander Barkov got the Panthers on the board 1:28 into the 3rd period, cutting the deficit to 3-1 as he scored his 8th goal of the playoffs. With Foegele getting the lone assist, Ryan McLeod scored on an empty net with 3:15 remaining to make it 4-1. For good measure, Darnell Nurse scored 12 seconds later with the net still empty, sealing the 5-1 win.
Janmark said of the win that "Ever since we went down in the series we've talked about playing from the right end, playing good in the defensive zone and getting rid of our mistakes and put the pressure on them. I think we did that throughout the game. We played the right way, we got some looks, scored."
Winning his 3rd straight game of the series, Stuart Skinner came up big once again between the pipes for the Oilers. Skinner kept the Panthers at bay, stopping all but one of the 21 shots he faced, giving him a .952 save percentage. He also got in on the scoring by getting an assist on Nurse's empty net goal.
Getting his 3rd straight loss of the series after winning the first 3, Sergei Bobrovsky couldn't hold off the Oilers attack. Bobrovsky turned aside 16 out of the 19 shots on goal the Oilers tested him with, posting a .842 save percentage.
Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said after the game that "Right now, if you walked into the room, there won't be a lot of happy people. It doesn't have to be right tonight. You've suffered a defeat. You feel it. It hurts. You lick your wounds and we start building that back tomorrow. But who you are tonight means nothing to who you're going to be two days from now."
After two days off, the deciding game 7 will be held Monday night in Florida. There is no more after Monday. Either the Panthers will hoist the Stanley Cup on home ice, or the Oilers will do so on the road as the first team to successfully come back from a 3-0 deficit in the cup final.
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