Oilers won’t go quietly in crushing game three defeat

There are certain moments in a game or playoff series that will forever go unforgotten.

Like Connor McDavid’s first period, game two, power play assist on Leon Draisaitl’s goal.

Or Brad Marchand’s overtime winner while surviving a bump by Evan Bouchard, a mere ten feet from the Edmonton Oilers’ net.

But those are just moments.

A theme of the Stanley Cup final has been first period penalties, and the lack thereof for the next two, plus overtime.

Here’s how it worked:

48 first period penalty minutes in games one, two, and three, followed by 10 minutes for the rest of games one and two.

Pretty simple.

Make the calls early on—perhaps too many—then put away the whistles, let the players sort it out amongst themselves, and manage the scrutiny later.

It is playoff hockey after all, and every call or interrupted play matters a little more in comparison to a random throwaway game in the middle of December, as the Florida Panthers and Oilers well know.

Which is what makes Evander Kane’s offensive zone calls that much worse and Stuart Skinner’s delay of game penalty that much more embarrassing.

Not to mention, out of the ordinary.

“Right away, I thought we ended up playing what Florida wanted,” explained Skinner post-game. “Little bit of a track meet, little bit of grinding, lots of penalties. It was just penalty chaos tonight.

“Started in the first period (when I) let in a goal on the PK.”

Or, you could look at the reffing the same way Evander Kane has.

“If you look at some of the calls, some of them are frustrating. (The Panthers) seem to get away with it more than we do,” added Kane. “It’s tuff to find the line.

“It was 4-4 (in penalties after the first), and then it gets out of hand, and there seems to be a bit more attention to our group.”

Two different perspectives, one more agreeable to a certain portion of the Oilers fan base, but both voices would agree on one thing.

“We didn’t play very well, that’s evident,” said Kane for the pair. “We have nobody to blame but ourselves, we can definitely be a lot better.

“I think part of it was the special teams. I’m not sure how many five-on-five minutes there were in the first period, (but) then Perry makes it a one-goal game, and we give it right back. And the third period, it is what it is.”

What the third period was, was necessary.

Perhaps not the early calls that took the game from bad to stupid, but the roughing penalties, game misconducts, and extra physicality when the game was too far gone to salvage made the perfect response.

It also broke the pattern.

Instead of 10-12 penalty minutes in the first period, followed by a game so soft that even Tom Wilson wouldn’t go near it, the Oilers and Panthers combined for 138 penalty minutes by the final buzzer.

Just WOW.

Some would say, and some have, that such a response is entirely unnecessary, that there shouldn’t be six players on the bench at any given moment with five minutes left in the game.

And to those people, perhaps some advice from McDavid could help.

“I don’t think we lost our composure until the end there, trying to show a little bit of fight back (and) I don’t mind the fight back,” explained the captain. “That’s what good teams do.”

“There’s a lot of emotions that are going into this. We’re trying to win a cup, they’re trying to win a cup, so there’s fight,” added Skinner. “And we’re not going to go down without swinging. They didn’t do it when we were beating them 8-1 (last season).

“They were cross-checking everybody, they were fighting us, they were doing everything they could to get under our skin.”

And they did so because if they were going to go down in the lopsided manner that they did, they weren’t going to go quietly.

Trent Frederic and Darnell Nurse weren’t going to say no to a fight at the 10-minute mark in the third period when the game was too lost and the opportunity was so apparent—be intimidating.

Make the Panthers a little more hesitant to go near Skinner (or Calvin Pickard) in game four because last time they did, Jake Walman and John Klingberg tag-teamed Mathew Tkachuk.

It wasn’t pretty, but it added some purpose into a game that had the potential to haunt the Oilers a month from now.

A playoff loss is a playoff, no matter how it’s done.

Make it count for something.

“We could have lost 3-2 in triple overtime, and the series would still be 2-1,” said Kane. “So, how you lose in the playoffs, maybe doesn’t matter as much in the regular season.”

When all is said and done, the Oilers have shifted their identity, Florida’s flinching, and it’s a best-of-seven, not three.

It is perhaps too early to hand out the Stanley Cup because Kane plus extras went down swinging.