SUNRISE, F;a – The Cup was in the building.
Now it’s headed back to Edmonton for a Game 6 on Friday night.
On Tuesday night, the Oilers played spoilers by riding Connor McDavid’s second straight four point night in a 5-3 win over the Panthers.
“He puts this team on his back,” Edmonton’s Corey Perry said of McDavid. “When we’re against the wall, he puts us on his back and he plays. You see why he is the best player.”
McDavid is the first player in NHL Cup Final history to post two four-point games in a row.
It was a total effort from everybody,” McDavid said. “Special teams, obviously, were great. The penalty kill, there’s nothing else to really say. It’s been great. ‘Brownie’ scores a nice goal there to kind of settle us in. The power play got going, ‘Stu’ was great and 5-on-5 we just did enough. It was a total team effort from top to bottom.”
Stuart Skinner made 29 saves in the win.
Connor Brown put the Oilers’ offense into gear with a shorthanded strike at 5:30 of the opening stanza.
“Just unacceptable,” the Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk said. “We’ve got to start better. I thought our start was good, but we just gave one up and then we were trailing.”
Brown picked off a cross ice pass in the Oilers’ defensive zone and sent a backhand shot into the cage for the lead. It was the second straight game for the Oilers opening the scoring with a shortie.
“Absolutely nothing has changed for our situation in the last two games except we learned some things,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Some lessons we don’t need to learn, we’ve learned them enough. But we keep getting taught those lessons. But nothing’s changed for us. Not one thing.”
Two minutes into the middle frame Zach Hyman deflected a shot from Evan Bouchard at the blueline, on the power play, for a 2-0 lead in the game.
“I score a lot of goals from there,” Hyman said. “A lot of times it hits me and it goes in, [but] ‘Bouchy’ seems to hit me and most of the time it doesn’t go in, it just hits me. It’s nice that that one went in.”
At the five-minute mark of the second, McDavid took a shot from the goal line on the left side of the cage that found the only possible daylight for a 3-0 lead to the Oilers.
“I watched him go through guys and then pass it over to me,” Perry said. “I didn’t even yell for it. He just saw me go to the net. That’s just the type of player he is.”
It was the ninth straight goal scored by the Oilers in the the last two games.
“Coming in on that side of the goal I’ve gone short side lots,” McDavid said. “I would say most people know that I look there. [Bobrovsky] was standing. [Hyman] is always around the net, so I tried to put it there and it found a way in.”
Tkachuk scored off a takeaway in the Oilers’ zone and slipped behind the defense for a quick shot on Skinner to make it 3-1.
Corey Perry replied with a power play goal in the 12th minute of the second period. He converted a pass from McDavid, who had abused all four Panthers defenders with a rush into the zone down the left side of the slot before dishing it off to Perry for the easy tap in and 4-1 advantage.
Evan Rodrigues scored at 12:08 to get that one back and make it 4-2 to the Oilers headed to the third period.
In the third, the Panthers’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored at 4:04 to make it tighter at 4-3.
With 17 seconds left on the game clock, McDavid hit for a double into an empty net for the 5-3 final.
“I know a lot of guys counted us out,” Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch said. “We’ve been counted out a lot through the playoffs, regular season, whatever. But it doesn’t faze the group in there. They have a lot of belief and a lot of just enjoying every extra day because we were counted out a long time ago and we’re still here playing hockey in June. We are going back to Edmonton for Game 6 and there’s a lot to smile about.”
The goal came after a clearing attempt down ice was swept away at the goal line by a diving Tkachuk before McDavid collected the loose puck for the goal.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 19 saves in the loss.
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