After Maurice Richard’s eyes, we must also talk about Corey Perry’s. More precisely, his eyes after his goal staged by Connor McDavid, because they were essentially the eyes of every hockey fan glued to their television on Tuesday.
Perry scored the winning goal in a more complicated victory than expected, but no matter. The Oilers won 5-3 in Game 5 of the final to cut the Panthers’ lead to 3-2. For a second meeting in a row, Edmonton therefore postponed elimination, and the Panthers will now have to do battle again with the noisy crowd at Rogers Place on Friday.
The goal, first. McDavid maneuvered with a combination of agility and speed that only he possesses, to break free to pass to Perry. If defenseman Niko Mikkola ever has to have a hip replaced one day, he can pass the bill on to McDavid’s insurer.
That’s why Perry took that long, amazed look at number 97, who was joining his teammates to celebrate the goal.
With these two performances, McDavid now has 23 points in 12 games since the start of his career in games where the Oilers are at risk of elimination. One day, we will have to invent a word to describe his exploits.
Whether the Oilers win or lose, it will become increasingly difficult not to vote for McDavid for the Conn Smythe Trophy, especially since the Panthers’ leading candidate, Sergei Bobrovsky, has been short of miracles for two games. The one nicknamed “Bob” allowed 9 goals on 39 shots in Games 4 and 5.
It’s hard to blame him when McDavid turns into a wizard. Except that the Russian goalkeeper himself feeds the beast with technical waste in his game, such as protecting the bottom of his net on the Oilers’ third goal.
McDavid shines offensively, but also stands out in other facets of the game, sometimes by winning a battle against Aleksander Barkov along the ramp, sometimes by retreating at full speed to lift an opposing stick and cancel an attack.
McDavid’s candidacy is all the more difficult to ignore since his faithful sidekick is definitely not playing to 100% of his abilities. Leon Draisaitl has just two assists in five games in the Finals and despite playing 22 minutes on Tuesday, his impact was barely noticed.
To return to the theme of eyes, we can also talk about those of Bill Zito. Spied on by Sportsnet cameras at the end of the match, when it was 4-3 Oilers, the Panthers general manager seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Bobrovsky’s game may well be a source of stress for the GM. On the blue line, Brandon Montour didn’t have his best game either. Connor Brown, a valiant Oilers support worker, gave him a helping hand in the first period. It was also a pass from Montour that Brown intercepted to push himself into a breakaway and open the scoring.
If Zito and the Floridians are looking for a source of hope, however, they can turn to Matthew Tkachuk. The Panthers’ alpha male didn’t necessarily experience a grand final until now, but his goal scored in the middle of the match visibly revived him. From then on, Tkachuk was in all the fights and finished his evening with two points, four shots and six hits. It was he who sounded the alarm for his people when the Albertans were leading 3-0 and had cut off the legs of the Panthers. It was also he who set up his team’s third goal, narrowing the score to 4-3.
His late-game dive to prevent an empty-net goal was also one of his highlights of the day, but his teammate Oliver Ekman-Larsson stopped playing altogether, giving McDavid the insurance goal without worrying him. Zito could well have been angry in his dressing room.
The Panthers will need everything Tkachuk can offer, especially to bother Stuart Skinner. The Oilers goalie has regained his splendor, to the point where he nods his head to the music during stops, a practice much more common in basketball than in hockey. Sam Bennett tried to disturb him by tripping him in the blue paint, but it didn’t work. It took two unstoppable shots to thwart him, as did a bouncing puck at the end of a messy Oilers presence in their territory.
Someone from the Panthers will have to stand up, because in the opposing camp, the 97 decided that this final was going to be prolonged.
