I don’t know about you, but after watching that Saturday night’s game, I witnessed a squad that was committed to playing for the entire 60 minutes for the first time in the series. This was demonstrated by the fact that the Canucks had just four shots on goal at the end of the first intermission and only fifteen for the whole game. That was the Oilers’ most comprehensive defensive effort of the whole series.
It appeared as though the Oilers had a bad habit of building up a lead and then sitting on it before game six. They would play around in the neutral zone or dump the puck in the Canucks’ zone to kill time and wait on their advantage. Looks like the Oilers.
Zach Hyman hasn’t scored since the first game, but he leads the team in playoff goals, so I’ll give him a break on this one. Since the first round matchup against the Kings in game two, Dylan Holloway had not scored. Evander Kane had not scored since the final game of the first round when he scored his second goal in two games. Just his second goal of the series and his third of the playoffs came from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. (According to the Cult of Hockey player grades in the Edmonton Journal, Nuge topped all forwards in ice time with 21:04, spending 3:34 on the penalty kill, or slightly less than 16 percent of his minutes.)
Leave a Reply