The Edmonton Oilers have taken ice hockey’s Stanley Cup Final to a deciding game seven thanks to a 5-1 home victory over the Florida Panthers, coming within one win of an improbable comeback for the title.
Warren Foegele collected one goal and one assist, while Adam Henrique, Zach Hyman, Ryan McLeod and Darnell Nurse scored one goal apiece for the Oilers, who have erased a 3-0 deficit in the best-of-seven championship series and forced a winner-take-all clash in Florida on Tuesday morning Australian time.
Goaltender Stuart Skinner made 20 saves and also recorded an assist.
Edmonton will attempt to join the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs as the only teams to trail 3-0 and win the Stanley Cup.
The only other team to reach game seven in the finals when trailing 3-0 is the 1945 Detroit Red Wings, who coincidentally lost to the Maple Leafs in 1942. Detroit forced a deciding game with three consecutive victories only to lose Game 7 to Toronto.
Aleksander Barkov notched the only goal for the Panthers, who have been outscored 18-5 in the trio of losses. Goalie Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 16 shots.
The Oilers had the early momentum and finally cashed in at the 7:27 mark of the first period when Foegele converted Leon Draisaitl’s pass on an odd-man rush for his third goal of the play-offs.
Henrique doubled the lead 46 seconds into the second period. Mattias Janmark sent a pass during a two-on-one rush that Henrique converted with a one-timer off the post and into the net for his fourth of the play-offs.
The Panthers then built some momentum but suffered a crushing blow when Hyman made it 3-0 by burying a breakaway chance for his 16th goal of the post season at 18:20 of the second period.
Barkov, who appeared to score within seconds after it became a 2-0 game only to see it overturned thanks to a successful offside challenge by the Oilers, put the Panthers on the board 88 seconds into the third period with his eighth goal of the play-offs, but to trim Florida’s deficit to 3-1.
Empty-net goals by McLeod — his fourth of the play-offs and third in the series — and Nurse rounded out the scoring.
Reuters
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