Some things to worry about before the Edmonton Oilers play Game 6

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8 hours ago

This comeback team needs another one. The biggest of their lives, in fact.
Trailing 3-2 in the Stanley Cup Final after their second dismal outing in three games, the Edmonton Oilers will have to summon every ounce of fight they have left, get up off the deck, and force a Game 7.
Will they? The Panthers were first to every puck and won every battle Saturday against an Oilers team that seemed overwhelmed, unable to find an answer for wave after wave of Florida attack.
Letting the Oilers come back from 3-0 down on the road in Game 4 should have broken the Panthers. It should have signalled a shift in momentum. Playoff defeats don't get more devastating than that. Instead, it's starting to look like that was Edmonton's last gasp, a once-in-a-century comeback sandwiched in between 6-1 and 5-2 losses.
It doesn't look good.
But the Oilers have 14 wins in the playoffs, eight of which have been comebacks. It's a team that rebounded from 0-2 down in the Los Angeles series and became the first road team in 106 years to win a Stanley Cup Final game after trailing 3-0.
You're out of your mind if you don't think they can't come back and win it all.
Playing a stinker, giving everyone very good reason to believe they're done, and then coming back to silence the doubters is what they do.
Whether they can do it against one of the best teams of the last 30 years is the question.
Some other things to worry about before Game 6:
• At no other point in the series did it look like the Oilers were going to lose, but the way they withered and wilted in Game 5, on the heels of a 6-1 defeat in Game 3 and falling behind 3-0 in the first period of Game 4, suggests the Panthers are pulling away.
Is Florida just the better team? You can't go there yet. There is still a Game 6 to be played, but things are trending in the wrong direction.
• The slow start thing is inexcusable. This is the Stanley Cup Final, you have to be ready to go, and at the first intermission of the last three games Edmonton trailed 2-0, 3-0 and 2-0. Anyone can play with urgency when the situation is desperate, but champions manufacture that urgency at the opening faceoff.
• Did the Oilers come out as timidly as they did in Game 5 because they were afraid of taking more early penalties?
• Sam Bennett and Brad Marchand have been better than Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and it's tipping the balance. Bennett and Marchand have 11 goals in the series while Draisaitl (four) and McDavid (one) have five. Marchand and Bennet are plus 11 in the series, McDavid and Draisaitl are minus six.
• It's a shame if Corey Perry loses yet another Stanley Cup Final. He shows up and plays hard every night. That a 40-year-old is second on the team in playoff goals isn't a good look on everyone else.
• The Oilers miss Zach Hyman big time. They need somebody who can score the kind of goals that Perry does, through tough work around the front of the net. The power play — 4-for-23 (17.3 per cent) in the Final isn't getting the job done and could use his help.
• Did practising on a pair of off-days between Game 3 and 4 do more harm than good? Rest is a weapon in the playoffs and taking one of those days off might have been wise. After a schedule of Game 3, practice day, practice day, Game 4, travel day, Game 5, the Oilers looked tired on Saturday.
• The Oilers like to think they're deep, but Florida's depth is out of this world. Florida's third line (Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell and Brad Marchand) has 55 points in the playoffs. Edmonton's third line has 13.
• And where would two of Edmonton's top six wingers from Saturday, Connor Brown and Vasily Podkolzin fit in Florida's top six of Carter Verhaeghe, Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Evan Rodrigues, Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk?
• It doesn't matter who the Oilers start in goal in Game 6. Sergei Bobrovsky is better. And Edmonton's team defence and puck management isn't helping. Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard gave up 14 goals in the last three games and none of them were especially weak.
• If Stuart Skinner isn't going to be your Stanley Cup-winning goalie, where are the Oilers going to find room under the cap to spend another $5 or $6 million to shore up that position next year
• Did somebody say salary cap? When McDavid and Evan Bouchard get paid, it's going to be even tougher for the Oilers to build the kind of depth Florida has.
• If the Panthers close this out for three straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final and back-to-back wins, they will go down, rightfully so, as one of the best teams in the salary cap era.
What, then, will the Oilers go down as?
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