Oilers move to Western Conference Final Round

In Calgary, Connor McDavid scored with five minutes gone in overtime on Thursday night to give the Edmonton Oilers a 5-4 win over the Flames, and a 4-1 series win.

“He’s everything to us,” the Oilers Leon Draisaitl said. “He’s our leader, he’s our go-to guy. He’s the guy that everyone looks up to when you need him. He’s done it all season, he’s done it all his career. Last two months or last month or whatever it has been, he’s been amazing for us. Eventually you just kind of run out of words.”

Mike Smith made 32 saves in the Oilers win.

“We’re only halfway, but it feels good to take that next step for now,” Draisaitl said. “It feels good to see we grow as a team, we grow as an organization. I’m really proud of the guys. This was a hard series. That’s a really good team over there and they made it hard on us and they pushed back, and we had to push back twice as hard. Great job by everyone.”

Edmonton will await the winner of the Colorado Avalanche and St Louis Blues second round series.

Mikael Backlund had a goal and two points for Calgary.

“Right now, it’s just all disappointment, frustration, upset,” Backlund said. “We had a great team. A great group of guys. Proud of all the guys and would go to war with all the guys again. It just didn’t finish the way we wanted.”

Andrew Mangiapane scored in the first period, and Backlund scored in the middle frame to give Calgary a 2-0 lead.

The Oilers outscored the Flames, 4-3, in the second period.

“They just made plays in key moments of games, and we didn’t,” Calgary forward Blake Coleman said. “You look at a lot of the games, they were tight in the third and we just couldn’t come up with that big play to put us over the hump in the last couple of games.

“It’s such a small margin of error at this time of year, and that’s part of the learning curve and the growth is learning how to win tight games and being a really difficult team in important situations.”