Did The Edmonton Oilers Finally Meet Their Match In The Avalanche?
By Jim Lynch
The Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche series has two of the best players in the league facing off. Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid are two of the best players in the league. They are both capable of doing amazing things, but it seems like one team has the advantage here.
The Edmonton Oilers might have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but the Avalanche have Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog. It doesn’t stop with those two either. The Avalanche also have Nazem Kadri, Andrew Burakovsky, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar and Devon Toews.
The Avalanche have better goaltending and are the deeper all-around team overall. That supporting cast is definitely a better group than what Edmonton has, despite how good Evander Kane and a lot of the supporting cast for the Oilers was yesterday, it was not enough in game one.
Connor McDavid has basically willed his team to the Conference Final so far these playoffs, but it might not be enough to get them much further. I am not saying this series is going to end in four games or anything, but the better team won in game one and they looked poised to keep winning.
The good news for Edmonton is they showed they can score. With their back against the wall down 7-3 in the second period, Edmonton could have just rolled over. But they didn’t and Edmonton got things going with a little over three minutes left when Connor McDavid scored this goal.
From that moment on, the game changed. Edmonton scored the next two goals in the third to make it 7-5 and 7-6, from that point on anything could have happened. The same way Edmonton lost game one against Calgary despite showing some flashes of success in a high-scoring game, that is what happened here.
If you want to look at things on a positive note for the Oilers then the fact of the matter is Colorado had not given up six goals all postseason until last night. Anything can happen in the playoffs and this series is destined to go back and forth assuming the big guys in Edmonton continue to rise to the occasion and find another level.