Edmonton Oilers Playoff Thoughts: Round 2, Game 4

Corey Perry held a Mother’s Day event for all of his Edmonton Oilers teammates yesterday. I’m sure all the mothers liked that better than the last-second present they got the night before.

The Edmonton Oilers are still up 2-1 in the series, and they were due for a loss after six straight wins. It’s how they lost that made fans light their heads on fire. They’d just tied the game late, because it’s not an Oilers game if they’re not under pressure. William Karlsson breezes his way to the offensive zone with the puck, it goes loose, and Stuart Skinner challenges Reilly Smith outside of his goal crease. Smith sends a shot that could’ve gone wide, but Leon Draisaitl, in an attempt to help out his goalie, accidentally tipped the puck into his own net with 0.4 seconds left in regulation. As Courtney Theriault humorously put it on Twitter, this year’s Rocket Richard trophy winner has officially scored a goal on all 32 NHL teams.

Skinner didn’t have to leave his goal crease on the game-winning goal, but I disliked him more on 2 or 3 of the other goals he allowed before that. I think rather than just skating with Smith, he should’ve charged the puck if he really was so adamant on stepping out of his safe zone. If Leon doesn’t get his stick, the puck doesn’t go in the net. If Stu stays where he is and maybe hugs the post, then maybe Leon doesn’t have to worry about that.

I feel bad for Stuart Skinner, I truly do. I had no idea Calvin Pickard was day-to-day until after I just had my Game 3 preview published. But if there was ever a time for Stu to find redemption and get his confidence back, it was Saturday night. It started off well with an early 2-0 lead for the home team. Skinner made some good saves, even robbing Tomas Hertl a couple of times. But those aren’t the memories that Oilers fans went to bed with. The mistakes made in front weren’t his fault, but the goals were still savable. Kris Knoblauch confirmed that Pickard won’t play tomorrow, making Oilers fans more anxious for what to expect from the goaltending tonight. Throughout the entire season, I haven’t been someone who blamed Skinner for every single goal, like a lot of fans do. But your backup being 6-0 in the Playoffs with an .888SV%, vs your #1 being 0-3 in the Playoffs with an .817 SV%, stats don’t lie. I was cautiously optimistic that a two-week break and a 2-0 series lead heading home might be what he needed to quiet the doubt. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.

The team called up goaltender Collin Delia from Bakersfield, and Olivier Rodrigue was the backup on Monday. This tells me Pickard’s injury in Game 2 doesn’t look like a quick fix for a while. I didn’t expect a series sweep, but I wrote in Saturday’s article that the Oilers needed to at least go up 3-1. They can still do that, but the way Game 3 ended makes fans less confident. One of two things will happen after tonight. The Game 3 heartbreaker will either mirror Jim Hiller’s Game 3 coach’s challenge that swung momentum Edmonton’s way in Round 1, much to our chagrin, or it’ll be like Round 2 in 2022 when Mike Smith allowed a shorthanded tying goal from the other team’s zone in the third period of Game 4, but Edmonton still pushed through that and won the series. But they can’t afford to completely lose out on what could’ve been made into a stranglehold at home. The keys to the game are…

Edmonton Oilers Thoughts

Watch The Bench: On two of Edmonton’s goals against, they had premature line changes. This gave the Golden Knights more open ice for odd-man rushes. Get a better idea of when it’s time to get on or off the ice.

Pace The Stars: It’s now happened twice in these Playoffs that they tried forcing a regulation win after tying the game late. It backfired in the final minute and seconds both times. The first time was in Game 1 against LA, the second time, on Saturday night, wasn’t as dramatic. Assuming Kris Knoblauch’s group would even be in this situation again, he needs to just accept going into Overtime. Rest your stars, don’t get greedy.

Short Term Memory: Because that’s what postseason hockey is all about, being able to move on and not getting raddled easily. Stuart Skinner has to be the guy in net now, and he’ll make a lot of us bite our nails until we have nail-less fingers. Who knows what it’ll take for him, but he’d better figure it out. If he can bounce back tonight, then, depending on how the rest of this series goes, we can all have a good laugh about how paranoid Game 3 made us. Draisaitl had two assists in Game 3, but it was possibly his worst ever defensive game. Not just the accidental own goal, but a turnover that would eventually be the first goal against. He needs to come back with a vengeance.