Edmonton, Canada – Friday, the streets of Edmonton were flooded with blue and orange, the colors of the city's hockey team.
From the center of Southgate, on the southern edge of the city, in the financial district of the city center, it seemed that everyone, students and traders with taxi and cable, wore oil sweaters. And with reason: their team, finalist of the Stanley Cup a season ago, was fighting for his life in the playoffs against a team of Kings which he had sent each of the last three playoffs easier.
The kings won first two games In the series of best seven, Edmonton desperately needed a home victory to return to the series. He had this unusually, scoring four unanswered goals in the last seven minutes of a 7-4 victory.
But the Oilers did not do it alone. The atmosphere, said winger Evander Kane, who scored the goal that started the final rally, played a big role.
“It was nice to appear in front of our own fans,” he said. “You will come back to Edmonton, there is buzz in the city. There is buzz in the morning. We were a bit reluctant.”
The Kings are still leading the first round 2-1 series before match 4 Sunday in Edmonton. The two teams will then return to Los Angeles for match 5 on Tuesday. But a fifth match looked unlikely until a bizarre sequence that started with 6:42 to play an advance of 4-3 Kings and changed the complexion of the series.
It started with Kane marking on a rush in front of the Kings net to equalize the score, although the goal took a little time to settle because it appeared Kane, playing for the second time this season, launched the washer under the Kings Darcy Kuemper goalkeeper.
After a long video review determined that Kane used his stick to score, the Kings called for a dead time and rather than playing safely, they challenged the goal, saying that Kane had interfered with Kuemper. When they lost this challenge, Edmonton received a two -minute power game and needed only 10 seconds with Evan Bouchard marking what turned out to be the winner of the game on a Tib of the Plé.
The oilers, laundered on the power game in the first two games, scored two goals, both from Bouchard, with The Man Advantage on Friday. The Kings also had two power game goals and are now seven years old for 12 in the series with The Man Advantage while the teams combined for 30 goals in total in the three games.
So much for the conservative nature of hockey in the playoffs. And this series could have turned on Jim HillerThe challenge, which was the most distant thing to play safely.
“We take a time dead. We understand the situation. We do not want to give them a power game, but clearly we estimated that, we estimated it, this challenge was in our favor. The league did not agree,” said the Kings coach. “The next step would have been for us to kill a penalty and it did not happen either. It is a difficult section for us, there is no questions. It is hockey. It is hockey in the playoffs, especially.”
Connor McDavid and Connor Brown each marked in an empty net in the last 1:40 to account for the final score. It was the second time in three games that Edmonton scored four times in the last period to erase a deficit, although the Kings returned to win the first time.
“I'm pretty happy that we were playing the game fairly well to lead them in the third period,” said Hiller. “So I'm going to take this. That's how I'm looking at that.”
Another way to see this is that the kings collapsed twice, not ending the games they led easily. Friday, they erased a deficit of two goals and twice broke the links to take the lead twice, only to return everything.
Oilers fans align themselves in front of Rogers place before match 3 of the eliminatory series against the Kings on Friday evening.
(Andy Devlin / NHLI via Getty Images)
“Yeah, it fears,” said defender Mikey Anderson. “But we are still in a good place. You can come back in two nights and get another stab, which is the best part.”
Pay attention to what you want, because the next stab will also be on the ice of the Oilers, in one of the noisiest buildings in the NHL.
Hockey in Edmonton is special, plus a religion than a game. And any night, the oilers play in the playoffs is the night of the church.
On Friday, Rogers Place was a noisy noise cacophony when outside the thousands of people who could not get a seat in the temple – some wearing signs that read “we believe” – started to align more than three hours before the game for a place in the “Moss Pit”, an outdoor fan zone named after Joey Moss, a long -standing employee of the club.
Their prayers were granted by a return which seemed to benefit from a small divine intervention. It is more likely that the oilers simply fed the size and fervor of the crowd, which inspired the team at home while intimidating visitors.
“The crowd was emotional,” said Hiller. “The crowd was great. Energy, we expected. I would have liked us to do a better work of simple alteration of this. ”
Anderson accepted.
“We knew they were going to go out hard. It is their skating rink,” he said.
The fans of the oilers narrow the Kings defender attracted Doughty during the first period of match 3 Friday evening in Rogers Place.
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The oilers also finished strong, taking over a series which appeared almost until the last seven minutes on Friday.
Then, the Edmonton ice district, a city square centered around the hockey arena, continued to buzz until midnight. A van with a false oil derrick flanked by two large flags of the oilers, rolled tricks in the area while the fans in the rigor The orange and blue team sweaters have scrambled, too excited to leave but too exhausted to do much more than blow the horns and block the sidewalks.
“What a game,” repeated a young man aloud in particular.
The Oilers will play again on Sunday, the traditional Christian Sabbath, and the faithful will drop again in Rogers Place to offer Hosannas at decibel levels strong enough to have your ears bleed. If their prayers are granted, the series will return to Los Angeles even two games each.
Otherwise, Friday's game could prove to be a false miracle, unworthy to rent or condemn.
“It is good right now to obtain this victory,” said Leon Draisaitl, who collected two assists, whose pass that created the winner of Bouchard. “But it won't do much if we don't follow him, right? We have to follow him and bring him back to 2-2.”
