This in from Sportsnet’s top insider Elliotte Friedman, his take on The Jeff Marek Show that Florida’s poor performance in Game 4 wasn’t a trend, but a blip.
“I think that game the other night was a blip (for the Panthers,” Friedman said. “Yeah, they got their ass kicked. Yeah, the Oilers looked great. But that was a blip. I think the Panthers are very mature. I think they will re-collect. I think they will come out hard. And I think they’re going to give the Oilers everything they have. This is the game — I could be totally wrong about this, it’s happened before — but to me this is the game that Stuart Skinner have to steal… I bet you tomorrow night if Edmonton wins, he makes four or five phenomenal saves.”
The Panthers had flown in their families to Edmonton for Game 4 and said that threw them off a bit, Friedman noted. “They were a little more nervous than normal and they don’t think that’s going to be a problem at all tomorrow.”
My take
1. Friedman is a neutral observer who has been inside the guts of the game for dozens of playoff series, so I put weight in his take. It’s much like what many commentators were saying after Game 1 — a match that Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky stole from the Oilers — that Florida was going to come out with a much better effort in Game 2 after playing so poorly and getting out-chanced so thoroughly. And, in that case, the experts were right. In fact, Game 2 in Florida was the only game in the series where the Panthers had more Grade A shots than the Oilers. In every other game, the Oilers have had considerably more, but they still lost Games 1 and 3 due to Bobrovsky’s incredible netminding and their own proclivity to give up “freebie” goals against, mental mistakes leading to Florida scoring.
2. Based on the flow of play in this series, with Edmonton having significantly more Grade A shots, I’d expect Edmonton to again have an advantage in that category. But Florida also demonstrated in Game 2 that it’s capable of shutting down the Edmonton attack. That kind of superlative defensive effort could again thwart the Oilers. If Florida amps up its own attack, Skinner could indeed be forced into a hero role if the Oilers are to win Game 5.
Skinner has come through in that role before, most notably Game 6 against Dallas, when he was magnificent.
3. My own sense has been for many months now that the only team that can beat the Edmonton Oilers is the Edmonton Oilers. That sense has been shaken a bit by the stellar play of Bobrovsky, but I still hold it to be true.
Edmonton beats itself when it focuses too much on attacking, too little on defence, too much on swarming and over-committing to win the puck back and charge out of the d-zone, not enough on covering off dangerous opposition attackers in the defensive slot.
If the Oilers get too puck-focused and puck-watching in their own zone in Game 5, they will give up “freebie” goals to Florida and quite rightly be booted out of the playoffs. If they still have players who haven’t learned that lesson by now — and a number of them wander and waiver in this commitment — they do not yet deserve to win.
But the Oilers are capable of superlative defence themselves. When every player is dialled in to back-check like a demon and cover the slot area like a monster, when every player is fixated on holding their defensive zone structure in front of Stuart Skinner as if they were Spartans in a phalanx, they can shut down the attack of any team. They can shut down the Florida Panthers, then use their superior skill to get enough goals to win.
