Oilers even series with Canucks at 2-2, with Game 4 win Bouchard's late goal gives Oilers the win

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In Edmonton, Evan Bouchard scored with 39 seconds left in regulation to give the Oilers a 3-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night.

The win evened the Stanley Cup Playoffs second round series  at 2-2.

“I’m disappointed,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said. “There are too many soft plays on that (third) goal, four or five plays. You have to dig in there. I thought we had four or five guys make mistakes on that goal. You can’t do that.

“We’ve been a resilient group all year, but we need five or six guys to get going. This is the Stanley Cup Playoffs, there are some guys, I don’t know if they thought it was playoffs, and we can’t play with 12 guys.”

Game 5 is et for Vancouver  on Thursday.

The Oilers had taken a 2-0 lead in the game before the Canucks rallied with a pair of goals in the third period to tie the game, 2-2.

Leon Draisaitl staked the Oilers to a 1-0 lead at 11:10 of the opening stanza. He scored off the power play from the right circle.

“When things like that happen, it’s a bit of a shock and sometimes you can kind of get on your heels a little bit and try to get into overtime,” Draisaitl said. “[Bouchard is] a great player. He’s been amazing for us all season, especially in big moments.

“It’s a big goal.”

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins hit for the 2-0 lead with 40 seconds left in the middle frame, scoring off an odd man rush up ice.

Calvin Pickard made 19 saves in the win.

“I was trying to channel my emotions as much as I could. Obviously it’s tough, it’s a high-stakes game,” Pickard said. “It’s a great opportunity. The guys played great in front of me and now it’s a best-of-3.”

The Canucks’ rally in the third period started with a strike by Connor Garland at 6:54, he scored off a shot from the high slot with the puck deflecting in off an Oilers’ defenseman.

“Any way you lose it’s disappointing, but we probably didn’t play well enough to win,” Garland said. “We fought back, which we’ve done a lot this year, but we gave them one too many plays.”

Dakota Joshua’ tied the game, 2-2, at 18:19 with the Canucks skating with an empty net behind them, and an extra skater.

“To tie it up like that and have a great push and then to lose like that, it’s disappointing,” Canucks captain Quinn Hughes said. “But these things happen and we have to move along.

“There is a lot of belief in this room, there is no quit and obviously going into the next game, we don’t want to find ourselves in a hole. But like I said after Game 1, if it’s 4-1 or 2-1 or 2-0, whatever it is, we’re going to go to the final buzzer.”

Arturs Silovs made 27 saves in the loss.