The Panthers defeated the Edmonton Oilers last night 4-1 to extend their series lead to two games. In what felt like a carbon copy of their start in game 1, Florida rattled off six shots early before the Oilers could tally one. Florida continued their momentum going on a power play after Oilers winger Warren Foegele laid a gruesome looking hit on the knee of Eetu Luostarinen, earning Foegele a five-minute major and a game misconduct. The Oilers power play kill has been historic this postseason, having killed 30+ straight penalties these playoffs. This put the Oilers at quite a disadvantage because both Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid don’t kill penalties, which means if the Oilers would have had to kill the full five minutes, they would not have McDavid or Draisaitl on the ice for a quarter of the period.
But the Oilers were gifted a penalty of their own early into the Panthers power play. Thanks to a tripping call against Oliver Ekman-Larsson, play went to 4 vs. 4 allowing McDavid to get back on the ice. Almost instantly, he orchestrated a 2 on 1 opportunity that gave Austin Ekholm the chance to score a rare 5-hole goal on Sergei Bobrovsky. After Bob’s game 1 performance, this was shocking to see Edmonton get such an easy goal. But Bobrovsky shook that off and shut down all Edmonton advances the rest of the night.
The star of the game was Panthers Evan Rodrigues, who was gifted a lazy clearing pass from Oilers Evan Bouchard, allowing him a routine goal. His second in as many games. Rodrigues was not done yet, however, as he scored his second goal of the game with a beautiful deflection off a pass from Ekman-Larsson to extend the lead to 3-1. Aaron Ekbald added an empty netter to bring the goal total to four and put the final nail in the coffin.
The Oilers do have one thing going for them in this series, they are heading back to the best home-ice advantage in all of hockey. Edmonton fans live and die with their hockey, so you can expect the atmosphere to be nothing short of chaotic. Game 3 is set for Thursday at 7 PM CT on ABC.
The Panthers seem unstoppable. Hope it at least goes 5 games.