As unlucky as the Oilers were with getting shutout in Game 1, one of the red flags I mentioned was that Florida played better as the game went along & owned the third period. Game 2 was a continuation of that. Florida didn’t let them do much of anything, as any tangible offense they could get came off strong individual efforts from McDavid and they couldn’t get anywhere close to the net when they had zone time. The Panthers weren’t that much better at five-on-five, but they had the better power play and aren’t making a lot of mistakes on their exits, so they had a higher margin for error compared to the Oilers.
Objectively, this game sucked pond water so I’m just going to hit on some bullet points.
A rough game for Edmonton’s five-man unit. McDavid had a couple of chances, but this was 2018 McDavid where he had to do everything on his own. Hyman had an awful game with the puck, Nugent-Hopkins missed on his two good chances & Bouchard was uncharacteristically terrible on exits, unraveling in the third period. He had 5 failed retrievals & 8 failed exits, which I wouldn’t bet on continuing because he’s a good player, but it goes to show how much of a Jenga piece he is. When one of the big guns has an off night, the rest of the team can’t do much to pick him up.
A continuing trend from Game 1 is Edmonton exiting the zone with possession at a higher rate while Florida did a better job of successfully exiting the zone in general. The difference with this game was they recovered more loose pucks or pushed Edmonton back at the red line so they couldn’t just re-enter the zone against them like they did in Game 1. This neutered a good chunk of their rush offense. Florida, meanwhile, had the edge in rush offense this night & what makes them dangerous is they can get some quality looks with support if they can beat a forecheck. They’re three lines deep with forwards who can carry the puck in & attack with numbers. They prefer to dump-and-chase, but the ability to counter is still there & they can do it without needing to rely on an offensive zone turnover.
I had the Oilers with 15 five-on-five shots that weren’t blocked, six of them were from Brett Kulak and 10 of them were from defenseman. Toothless offensive performance to say the least.
Always happy to see Evan Rodrigues get on the scoreboard because he does so much to help outside if that. Case in point, he led the Panthers in controlled entries in this game along with leading the team in forecheck disruptions. Perfect for a complementary forward & you can never have enough of those.
This feels like a rock bottom point for the Oilers, so I’m expecting a better showing in Game 3. Although their lack of depth is showing & this is the worst game Draisaitl played in a long time.Tkachuk also woke up & the Oilers have really lost their composure when they’re playing from behind late. As putrid as their offense was, they were only down one goal and needed to stack a couple good shifts together to get back in it. After the first Rodrigues goal, they were more panicked coming out of their own zone, rushing exits and turning the puck over. The most offense they got were a couple point shots from Kulak & that felt like the most they would get until they pulled the goaltender. I don’t expect Edmonton to play this poorly again, but things tend to snowball when the going gets tough for this team.
If Anton Lundell wasn’t the 6th best forward on Florida, he would be regular 60-point guy.
Great summary. Love reading the narrative with the transition stats, etc.