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Key events
Oilers 1-1 Panthers 9:09, 1st period
Edmonton gathered puck control, a flurry of possession that ended with a wrist shot by Bouchard and a glove save by Bobrovsky! The Oilers look comfortable.
And to think, moments earlier he had been hit so hard that he lost his helmet!
GOAL! Oilers 1-1 Panthers 11:56, 1st period
Now you see it, now you don’t! Florida’s lead is – Janmark has a seat and beats Bobrovsky. And just like this reply from Edmund! How about this for starters!
GOAL! Oilers 0-1 Panthers 15:33, 1st period
Just after the power play expired, Rodriguez fired a shot wide of Skinner, but Carter Verhae brilliantly misdirected the puck past Skinner and into the net! Florida takes first lead after Game 3!
Oilers 0-0 Panthers 15:39, 1st period
Barkov slams Janmark into the boards and he loses his helmet! And that’s the only chance Florida has on this power play.
Oilers 0-0 Panthers 17:39, 1st period
Florida’s Lundell immediately tested Edmonton’s Skinner, but he deflected the puck away easily.
Now we have an early penalty! A high stick from Warren Voegele to Montour means the Panthers have a chance to immediately settle the stomachs of Panthers fans.
The puck is falling!
We’re leaving! Here we are!
National anthems!
Well, Alanis Morissette just performed both anthems and, um, there were a lot of people singing O Canada! Eh!
I have never had a chance to appreciate both hymns before.
Oh Canada, rock hard 8/10.
But wait, now there’s a sturdy belt of the Star-Spangled Banner and some of the old “USA, USA” – so maybe there’s hope for the handful of locals in the house.
Alanis gets a 7.5/10 for this – I’d like a little more from her next time.
Former Panthers goaltender and letterman Roberto Luongo is banging the drum for Florida, and that means it’s coming face-to-face! Finally!
We’re almost done with…
…endless previews and about 3000 car ads. Game 7 is coming up.
Please wait!
You’re a Panthers fan…
…you’ve dropped three in a row, nobody believes in you and the whole planet is Oilers, Oilers, Oilers. But here’s what you have…
Oh, Canada!
You’re showing up in droves to our live blog tonight – 53% of our readers are from the great white north! You seem quite interested in hockey and the game in particular, for whatever reason. Let’s hear from you – from Victoria to St John’s – join our blog! Write to david.lengel@guardian.co.uk or tweet @lengeldavid. And please send nanaimo bars!
Whatever works!
Who’s rooting for who?
Well, I think it’s safe to say that most neutrals would love to see Edmonton win and make history tonight. They are loaded with sweet eyes and pass the puck like an art form. Simply put, they are a lot of fun to watch. And team/regional/provincial rivalries aside, we know most of Canada would certainly like to see the Oilers break the 31-year North Stanley Cup longest drought on record tonight.
Who supports Florida but a small group of defensive hockey fans who envy a state with no income tax? Probably not too much, but that doesn’t mean Florida isn’t a great team that has done just about everything right this postseason. If they can pull this off, they will have avoided a choke hold for all time and a lifetime of humiliation and most of this three game nightmare will be forgotten with a cup lift!
Face off coming soon! Stay with us!
Isn’t it ironic?
…or maybe it’s just crazy because most of the world is rooting for the Oilers, with thousands of Oilers fans packed into the arena in Florida, and after losing three games in a row, the Panthers are rolling out the red carpet for Canada’s Alanis Morissette to sing the national anthem hymns tonight? Come on people! Where’s Ariana Grande when you need her?
What’s wrong with Sergey Bobrovsky?
When the Panthers goalie, known for hitting the ice first, always early for practice, didn’t show up Sunday, the rumor mill started spinning. Is he hurt? Is it just cooked? Do they leave him on the bench?
Famous talk show host Pat McAfee had a reasonable theory: “he’s exhausted.”
Then today, Monday morning, he suddenly came back after that unusual absence that happened at the most desperate of times.
One of the keys to this game will surely be Bobrovsky’s form, or rather if he can get it back in time to save a Panthers team that has scored the first goal in the last three games. Not allowing McDavid and company to settle early and put that first goal on the road is crucial and will have a lot to do with whether or not Florida can keep any thoughts of “here we go again” out of the hearts and minds of home fans, players and coaches.
Oh, and if you’re keeping score at home, here’s what Bobrovsky’s goalie line looks like against the Oilers’ Stuart Skinner after Game 3 ends.
Sergey Bobrovsky: .756 SV% & 6.43 GAA
Stewart Skinner: .943 SV% & 1.71 GAA
Here they come
Usually, hockey players come in with mullets, missing teeth, bad suits, looking like they haven’t seen the sun in a few years. And while the latter is certainly true here, McDavid and Leon Draistle actually look pretty good. Although the German could do with some socks, right?
Bonjur Hello!
Well, here we are at the mountaintop of North American sports, a season-deciding Game 7. That’s the best we can do here. That’s right: not even the Super Bowl, with all its pomp, circumstance and rigged capitalist spectacle, regardless of the game, can match Game 7. And the reason for that is because we know the Super Bowl is coming. We know it will happen. We are planning it. We create ads for it, months and sometimes years in advance. If it’s February, we know we’re going to get the big show, the huge ratings, the chicken wings, the weight gain, the hangovers.
But we never know when we’ll get a Game 7 for all the rings. Sure, we know there’s always a chance, but where, when, and how it takes time to present itself, and then sometimes those chances just turn to dust. And if you don’t buy what I’m selling, just think about this: We haven’t had a Game 7 to decide a championship here in North America since before the pandemic. And that’s a long time ago, isn’t it?
So no, we never know when it will come. After all, just a few days ago Florida Panthers were buzzing along with a 3-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals over the Edmonton Oilers. It was only a matter of time before a drunken Everglades team started tossing the old glass around a rooftop pool at a post-playoff bash somewhere around the southern reaches of the Sunshine State.
Except it didn’t quite happen that way. The Oilers, suffocated by Florida, figured out a way to breathe oxygen back into their dying season.
We didn’t expect it, or at least I didn’t. That’s because Edmonton, a team that averaged over 3.5 goals per game this season, a team that saw the best player on the planet, Connor McDavid, and Leon Draisaitl, one of the best players on the planet, combine for 238 points in the regular season, scored just four goals in the first three games. The Oilers were simply suffocated by Florida, much like the New York Rangers, who the Panthers slowly and thoroughly pushed out of the playoffs a round earlier.
Then suddenly goals flooded the ice. Eight in Game 4. Five in Game 5. Then five more in Game 6. The lights went on again and again and again and again and Florida, which had looked completely unsolvable, whose goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, seemed completely unbreakable, suddenly found themselves right where they didn’t want to be. Game 7.
But their plight is our delight. We can track what is perhaps the most anticipated hockey game of the century.
Only one team has overcome a 3-0 series deficit Stanley Cup finals, and that was more than 80 years ago: well before helmets, before glass, but just after chicken wire lined the boards. A long, long time ago and these days, that just doesn’t happen. Tonight he can.
Stay tuned, more to come!
David will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Colin Horgan on tonight’s game:
No NHL team has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win the Stanley Cup Final since the Toronto Maple Leafs did it against the Detroit Red Wings in April 1942. Now, 82 years later, the Edmonton Oilers can to change this story. On Monday night at the edge of the Everglades, the Oilers will face Florida Panthers in Game 7 and try to win their fourth straight to take the Cup and become the first Canadian NHL champions since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. If it goes the Oilers’ way, the game will likely be crowned as one of the NHL’s all-time best—or at least one of the most memorable—in league history. And the Oilers captain, a generational talent, will be back where his career with the team began.
It was Friday, June 26, 2015, and there was a buzz at the BT&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, home (still under a different name) of the Panthers. It was NHL draft night and the presumptive No. 1 pick was an 18-year-old from north of Toronto who had lit up the Ontario Hockey League for three years and led Canada to a World Junior Championship last winter. Connor McDavid has been playing at another level his entire life, allowed to skate at six with the nine-year-olds and given “exceptional status” to enter the OHL at 15, a year early, where he became the most decorated player in league history.
The Oilers, on the other hand, were coming off another dismal season. They had finished second in the Western Conference. By 2015, the Oilers had become something of a perennial draft joke. The team picked first overall in 2010, 2011 and 2012, seventh overall in 2013, then third overall again in 2013 – each a reflection of Edmonton’s poor performance. No matter how many top draft picks the Oilers added to the roster, they found themselves time and time again at or near the bottom of the league. But then, here was McDavid. Could he finally be the answer?
“I think my expectations exceed any expectations that anybody puts on me,” McDavid told the Globe and Mail after the Oilers selected him first overall. “I just have to make sure I play my game. If I live up to my expectations, chances are I’ll live up to everyone else’s as well.”
You can read the full story below:
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