Will the Edmonton Oilers be able to exorcise their Stanley Cup demons?

National Post

a day ago

If Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final was a slasher movie, then the Edmonton Oilers are about to return to the scene of the crime.
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And if Game 4 on Thursday at Amerant Bank Arena doesn't contain a wholesale plot twist and the Florida Panthers end up taking a 3-1 series lead, well, let's just say we've seen this movie before.
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It's the same on the Oilers have been playing over and over in their mind all season long, since losing Game 7 of last year's Stanley Cup Final on the road to the very same villains — ones who are looking to tip the playing field in their favour and know these Oilers are at their best at straightforward, even-strength 5-on-5 hockey.
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After splitting the first two games of this year's rematch at Rogers Place in Edmonton in a couple of overtime games it looked like nobody might win, the Oilers returned to Sunrise, Fla., for Game 3, and ended up playing right into the Panthers' paws.
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The antagonists of this story played their roles to a T, antagonizing the Oilers into precarious situations where they could be picked off, one by one, with the audience back in Edmonton foreseeing the obvious foreshadowing while screaming at their beloved characters to stop.
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Essentially, the Panthers turned the Oilers into the bad guys in the eyes of the officials, who doled out no fewer than 84 penalty minutes in Monday's game, the overwhelming majority of which cited Edmonton as the aggressor.
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If the Oilers were a bright, clean clown peering out from the sewer, then their red balloon popped in a 6-1 loss, and out spewed the Boogeyman, followed by the Babadook, both Freddy and Jason, some clown in a cornfield and a host of Deadites, to name a few.
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They chased the Oilers straight into the penalty box, and the victimized visitors found themselves trailing on the scoreboard faster than you can say, 'Klaatu barada nikto.'
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Suffice it to say, the Oilers are a team that's been living with demons over the past 11 months.
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And it stems from not just losing out in last year's Cup final, but the way they lost, falling behind 3-0 in the series before gathering up all their gumption with movie-montage efficiency to storm back and knot it up with three straight wins in true Hollywood style.
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That set the scene for the final act in Game 7, where everything was going according to plan before the Panthers forced it to go off-script on the way to winning 2-1.
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One goal.