The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Florida Panthers 5-1 to force Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Connor McDavid was held without a point, so Leon Draisaitl and the other Edmonton Oilers’ top players stepped up to get them one win from Stanley Cup.

Draisaitl made his first big impact in the Final by setting up Warren Voegele’s early goal, Adam Henrique and Zach Hyman scored in the second period and forced the Oilers to a Game 7 victory, beating the Florida Panthers 5-1 in Game 6 on Friday night.

“At the end of the day, we are playing to win and this will be the toughest game for us,” Draisaitl said. “We have to get our game back.”

They are the first team to reach the final after trailing 3-0 in the series since the Detroit Red Wings in 1945. The Oilers have a chance Monday night at sunrise to join the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs as the only NHL team to make it all the way. Way back from that deficit to lift the Stanley Cup.

“There was an unshakeable belief,” Hyman said. “No matter what happened throughout the year, we always believed we could qualify. No matter how tough the circumstances were, we believed we had a chance. It’s been a long season in the face of adversity that has prepared us. The next one will be the toughest. It’s an incredible feeling to do it in front of this Crowd for a chance to win now, this is our first chance to win.

The opportunity to make hockey history and end a three-decade Canada Cup drought would only arise after that McDavid’s heroics Four points each in Games 4 and 5 to take the Oilers from the brink to belief. This was the first time in his nine-year career that they won a game in which he did not score a point or hit the net.

Draisaitl, his longtime teammate from Germany who also won league MVP and is considered among the best players in the world, lit the spark in Game 5 after being largely ineffective against the Panthers.

“He’s a horse,” defenseman Darnell Nurse said. “He always shows up in the big moments. If you look at all his playoff performances, he’s one of the best players ever.

Draisaitl got the puck at center ice, skated around and through Florida’s defenders and put the puck on Foegele’s stick bar in order to tap the puck and Sergei Bobrovsky had almost no chance to stop it. This, of course, did not stop the enthusiastic crowd of over 18,000 people from mockingly chanting, “Sergei! Sergei!” Sir-ji!” begins before the chants and continues throughout the night.

It wasn’t easy to place the blame on the goalkeeper everyone called “Pop”, as the mistakes he made in front of him also contributed to the 2-on-1 rush that ended with Henrique beating Bobrovsky from a 2-on-1 rush after a perfect pass from Mathias. Janmark. The Panthers appeared tense and timid in front of their goalkeeper, in contrast to the juggernaut, which reached the final for the second year in a row and won the first three matches to move to the verge of the first title in the history of the franchise.

“We have one game left,” Panthers linebacker Dmitry Kulikov said. “We were ready from the beginning to play a series of seven matches, and nothing has changed now. We have qualified three times, and they played three good matches. Now it is up to us to win at home.”

Florida had just six shots on net midway through the game and finished with 21. Continuing a trend of being there when the Oilers need him most, Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner He saved at the right time to thwart the Panthers, allowing just one goal to Aleksander Barkov less than 90 seconds into the third period.

“He was lights out when we needed him,” Janmark said of Skinner.

The first time Barkov crossed the ball, 10 seconds after Henrique scored, the goal came off the board when Edmonton coach Chris Knoblauch It was successfully challenged To sneak. A lengthy review found that Sam Reinhart entered the offensive zone perhaps an inch or less before the puck, and the announcement was followed by a roar from the crowd.

“Actually, I didn’t think it was that close,” Knoblauch said. “In my opinion, it was definitely offside.”

This was not the highest vote ever received by Rogers Place, and there were plenty of candidates for that distinction. The decibel meter displayed on the video screens reached 113.8 as the Oilers took to the ice to the tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

It may have come close to that noise level when Ryan McLeod and the Nurses scored empty-goals in the final minutes, prompting chants of “We want the cup!” “We want the cup!” And a wild celebration at the viewing party outside.

It was the height of the city fever that had been engulfed in a sea of ​​blue and orange downtown in the hours before the puck dropped. Friday might as well have been a holiday in Edmonton, home to nearly a million people who are now fully capable of allowing themselves to dream of the Oilers adding another white championship banner to the rafters — and doing so in a most improbable way.

“We are excited to continue our season,” McDavid said. “That’s what it’s been. One game at a time, one day at a time. Looking forward to the next one.”

___

AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup And https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL