Who is on whose side?
Well, I think it’s safe to say that most neutrals would like to see Edmonton win and make history tonight. They are full of eye candy and passing the puck an art form. Simply put, they’re a lot of fun to watch. And, team/regional/provincial rivalries aside, we know most Canadians will definitely want to see the Oilers tonight break a 31-year Northern Stanley Cup drought, the longest in history.
Who is supporting Florida other than a small group of Defense First hockey fans who are jealous of a state with no income tax? Probably not by much, but that doesn’t mean Florida isn’t a great team that has done almost everything right this postseason. If they can do that they will be saved from the all-time choke job and humiliation of a lifetime and most of this three-game nightmare will be forgotten with a raise of a cup!
Faceoff coming soon! Stay tuned with us!
Isn’t this ironic?
…or maybe it’s just plain crazy, most of the world is rooting for the Oilers, thousands of Oilers fans are flocking to the arena in Florida, and after losing three straight games, the Panthers are rolling out the red carpet for Canadian Alanis Morissette Are you here to sing the national anthem tonight? Come on friends! Where’s Ariana Grande when you need her?
What’s wrong with Sergei Bobrovsky?
When the Panthers goaltender, who is known for attacking first on the ice and always arriving early for practice, did not show up on Sunday, the rumor mill began to heat up. Is he hurt? Is it ripe yet? Is he being benched?
Well-known talk-show host Pat McAfee had a sensible theory: “He’s tired.”
Then today, Monday morning, suddenly he was back after that unusual absence which came at the most desperate time.
One of the keys to this game will certainly be Bobrovsky’s form, or rather, if he can regain it in time to rescue a Panthers team that has scored the first goal in the last three games. Not allowing McDavid and company to get to work early and push the first goal is crucial and will have a huge impact on how Florida keeps any “here we go again” thoughts out of the hearts and minds of the home team. Can or not. Fans, players and coaches.
Oh, and if you’re keeping score at home, this is what the Bobrowski vs. Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner line looks like since the end of Game 3.
Sergei Bobrovsky: .756 SV% and 6.43 GAA
Stuart Skinner: .943 SV% and 1.71 GAA
here they come
Usually hockey players come in with mullets, broken teeth, bad suits, looking like they haven’t seen the sun in years. And while the latter is certainly true here, McDavid and Leon Draisaitl look really great. Although the Germans could do with a few socks, no?
Bonjour Hi!
Well, here we are, at the mountaintop of North American sports, Game 7 to decide a season. This is the best we can do here. That’s right: Not even a Super Bowl, with all its pomp, circumstance and juicy capitalist spectacle, can match Game 7, regardless of the match-up. And that’s because we know the Super Bowl is coming. We know it’s going to happen. We plan for it. We create ads for this months and sometimes years in advance. If it’s February, we know we’re going to get the big show, huge ratings, chicken wings, weight gain, hangovers.
But we never know when we’ll get a Game 7 for all the rings. Sure, we know there’s always opportunity, but it takes time to find where, when and how it presents itself, and then sometimes those opportunities go to waste, biting the dust. And if you don’t buy what I’m selling, just consider this: We haven’t had a Game 7 to decide the championship in North America since before the pandemic. And that happened a long time ago, didn’t it?
So no, we never know when it’s coming. After all, it was just a few days ago that the Florida Panthers were headed to the Edmonton Oilers with a 3-0 Stanley Cup Finals lead. It was only a matter of time before a team drunk from the Everglades started drinking old cups around the rooftop pool at a post-playoff party, somewhere around the southern end of the Sunshine State.
Except that didn’t happen at all. The suffocated oilers from Florida figured out a way to breathe oxygen back into their dying season.
We didn’t see this coming, or at least I didn’t see it coming. That’s because Edmonton, a team that averaged more than 3.5 goals a game this season, a team that featured Connor McDavid, the best player on the planet, and Leon Draisaitl, one of the best players on the planet, finished with 238 regular season points. He managed to score only four goals in the first three matches. The Oilers were crushed by Florida, just like the New York Rangers, whom the Panthers slowly and carefully eliminated from the playoffs one round earlier.
Then suddenly, a flood of shells hit the ice. Eight in Game 4, five in Game 5, then five more in Game 6. The lamps came on again and again, and Florida, which had seemed completely insoluble, whose goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, had seemed completely unbreakable, suddenly found themselves exactly where they didn’t want to be. Game 7.
But their plight is a matter of happiness for us. We get to follow arguably the most anticipated hockey game of the century.
Only one team has ever overcome a 3-0 series deficit in the Stanley Cup Finals, and it happened 80 years ago: before helmets, before glass, but just after the boards were lined with chicken wire. A long time ago, and nowadays, that just doesn’t happen. Tonight, it could happen.
Stay tuned, there’s more to come!
David will be here soon. In the meantime, here’s Colin Horgan on tonight’s game:
No NHL team has come back from 3–0 down to win the Stanley Cup Final since the Toronto Maple Leafs won against the Detroit Red Wings in April 1942. Now, 82 years later, the Edmonton Oilers can change that history. On Monday night on the edge of the Everglades, the Oilers will face off against the Florida Panthers in Game 7 as they try to earn their fourth consecutive win to take the Cup and become the first Canadian NHL champions since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. The way the Oilers went, the game will likely be crowned one of the NHL’s all-time best – or at least one of the most memorable in league history. And the Oilers captain, a generational talent, will be back where his career with the team began.
It was Friday, June 26, 2015, and the BT&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, home of the Panthers (still, under a different name), was bustling. It was NHL Draft night, and the projected No. 1 pick was an 18-year-old from north of Toronto who had lit up the Ontario Hockey League for three years and led Canada to the World Junior Championships last winter. Connor McDavid has been playing at the second level his entire life, being allowed to skate with nine-year-olds at age six and given “exceptional status” to enter the OHL a year early at age 15 Where he became the most respected player. History of the league.
The Oilers, on the other hand, were going through another disappointing season. They finished second-last in the Western Conference. By 2015, the Oilers had become a perennial joke in the draft. The team placed first overall in 2010, 2011 and 2012, seventh overall in 2013, then third overall in 2013 – each a reflection of Edmonton’s poor performance. No matter how many top draft picks the Oilers added to the roster, they repeatedly found themselves at or near the bottom of the league. But then, here was McDavid. Could that finally be the answer?
“I think my expectations are higher than anyone else has for me,” McDavid told the Globe and Mail after the Oilers selected him first. “I just have to make sure I’m playing my game. If I live up to my own expectations, chances are I’ll live up to everyone else’s expectations, too.”
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