Calvin Pickard's mission for Oilers is simple: Save the day
Your mission, should you choose to accept it Calvin, is to save the day.
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Yeah, it did seem like Mission Impossible, with the Florida Panthers' hands around the Edmonton Oilers ' throats, that a simple goalie change after 20 listless minutes, from Stu Skinner to Calvin Pickard, was going to stop Edmonton's Stanley Cup hopes from slipping away in Game 4.
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But here we are today, the Oilers very much alive, tied 2-2.
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Skinner hadn't done anything wrong, making 14 saves, some of them 10-bellers, in that first period Thursday, but desperate times called for not-so desperate measures, as it turns out. Pickard, as he's done over and over in this two-month fairytale run, simply refuses to lose. He's now in the same sentence with Grant Fuhr, Billy Ranford and Dwayne Roloson in the Oiler history books, goalies who were 7-0 or better in a single post-season for this club.
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Pretty good company.
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Pickard, who had won six straight starts in the Los Angeles and Vegas series, hadn't played significant minutes in a playoff game since Game 2 of the second-round matchup with the Golden Knights when Tomas Hertl fell on the back of the goalie's leg. As he recovered, he became Skinner's cheerleader and it was still a loud 'Stuuu' until the No. 2 helped rescue the Oilers to personally go to 7-0.
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Pickard stopped 22 of 23 shots over the last 51:28, with only the one blemish by Sam Reinhart with 20 seconds left in regulation and Sergei Bobrovsky pulled for an extra skater, soiling a clean-sheet relief job.
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So, it'll be Stick With Pick for Game 5 Saturday night at Rogers Place.
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Skinner has still never lost a playoff Game 4. He's 6-0 lifetime.
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But this time the calm, moustachioed, ball-capped Skinner, watched from the end of the bench as Pickard robbed Anton Lundell on a breakaway after a Jake Walman giveaway when Panthers could have gone up 4-1 11 minutes into the middle period. He maybe fist-pumped when his partner slid across to stop Aaron Ekblad in the dying seconds of the second, on a Florida PP, with the game tied 3-3. Then in the OT, Pickard got a piece of his mitt on Sam Bennett's shot from the high slot, all alone, and the puck crashed off the iron, and seconds later, stopped Eetu Luostarinen off his shoulder.
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'Pickard was really good and Stu wasn't bad at all,' said Fuhr, watching it unfold from his southern California home, 'but sometimes you have to realize that changing the goalie can wake up the team.'
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