The Stanley Cup Final was a lot more even on the ice than the 3-0 series lead showed early on. The Florida Panthers put themselves in a position to take the Stanley Cup with one more win but have yet to close the Edmonton Oilers out.
After being blown out in game five in Alberta, the Panthers returned home hoping to win the championship for the first time in franchise history.
The Oilers, like they did in game four, kicked things off with a short handed goal. It is one thing that their power play is the greatest of all time but they are scoring short handed as well. That is a lethal combination.
The goal scorer was Connor Brown who assisted on the shorty that they scored one game ago. It has been a wonderful stretch for Brown following a regular season he’d like to forget.
The Edmonton Oilers did what they needed to do to stay on top in Game Five
Early in the second period, the Oilers extended their lead again. Zach Hyman, the leading goal scorer in the playoffs, scored his first of the Stanley Cup Final by deflecting an Evan Bouchard blast past Sergei Bobrovsky.
About three minutes later, Connor McDavid added a goal to make it 3-0. He took advantage of a smart patient play by Warren Foegele to catch Bobrovsky off guard and beat him five-hole.
Matthew Tkachuk made things interesting with a goal about two minutes later. The Florida Panthers are never out of a game so this was a big goal.
Connor McDavid proceeded not to care and made a brilliant play to find Corey Perry for a goal. He skated the puck through multiple Florida Panthers defenders and Perry had an open net.
14 seconds later, Evan Rodrigues scored again in this series to get it back to being a four goal game. When Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored 4:04 into the third period, things started to get creepy for the Oilers. Any more mistakes and their season could have ended there.
Instead, after some intense play down to the wire, Connor McDavid found an empty netter for his fourth point of the night. That is back-to-back four-point games for the Edmonton captain.
They will now fly back to Edmonton, Alberta for game number six. That will take place on Friday in front of an insanely loud building filled with fans begging for one more home win.
If Edmonton can pull this off, they could book a flight back to Florida for an all-time great game seven. This series is at a new level now.