Oilers got pulled into Panthers’ Game 3 shenanigans and paid the price. Can they recover?

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SUNRISE, Fla. – The Edmonton Oilers can’t play like this if they want to win the Stanley Cup.

This isn’t necessarily a commentary on how Game 3 of the Final was their worst performance dating back weeks — to the second game of the opening round, more specifically — though that was certainly troubling enough. They did lose 6-1 to fall behind 2-1 in the series, after all.

No, this is more about how the Oilers got sucked into all the Florida Panthers’ shenanigans and completely lost the plot.

“We’ve got to be more disciplined than that,” Oilers defenseman Jake Walman said. “We know better than that.”

The Oilers were unruly early and became more unhinged as the game went along. It’s no wonder they never really had even a puncher’s chance.

The 140 combined penalty minutes were the fourth most in a Stanley Cup Final game. The Oilers accounted for 85 of them.

It was by far the Oilers’ most penalized game of the season, ahead of the “B Squad” – as L.A. Kings forward Phillip Danault called them – racking up 53 minutes during an April 14 loss. Only one other time did they surpass 30 minutes: the Connor McDavid suspension game in Vancouver in January.

This wasn’t Oilers hockey. Not even close.

“Right away, we ended up playing what Florida kind of wanted — just a little bit of a track meet, a little bit of grinding, lots of penalties,” Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner said. “It was just penalty chaos.”

The Oilers didn’t play smartly from their first penalty of the game, which came just past the five-minute mark when they were already trailing 1-0. All told, they gave the Panthers four power plays in the opening frame.

“When you start in the first with four penalties,” McDavid said, “it’s not a good way to get into your game.”

Worse still were the types of infractions for which they were caught. They were nabbed for three offensive-zone fouls, ranging from unwise to careless, plus a too-many-men penalty.

Evander Kane was sent to the box twice before the game was nine minutes old. Both trips were warranted. First he cross-checked Gustav Forsling in the back in front of the Florida net with the Oilers on a power play. Later, he high-sticked Brad Marchand on the forecheck. He also factored into the bench minor, too.

To top it off, Viktor Arvidsson was too aggressive around the crease and sent Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky to the ice. Bobrovsky seemed to fall over easily, but Arvidsson’s contact left the officials with little choice but to banish him to the box. That penalty led to a Carter Verhaeghe goal and a 2-0 deficit for the Oilers heading into the intermission.

“We shouldn’t have those,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said, “but I kind of question some of those penalties.”

Knoblauch can stick his nose up at some of the calls all he wants, but they were deserved.

Though Corey Perry scored on an Oilers man advantage 1:40 into the second period, Sam Reinhart restored Florida’s two-goal lead 80 seconds later.

“That was about it for us,” Knoblauch said. “I don’t think we really found our footing after that third goal.”

Evander Kane hits Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov during the third period of Game 3. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

The Oilers wound up gifting the Panthers 11 power plays and allowed them to score on three of them. It isn’t just hard to win that way, it’s near impossible. That’s especially true with the Oilers’ inconsistent penalty kill — to put it charitably.

Sure, there were tons of Panthers infractions that should have been called but weren’t. Sam Bennett got away with two clear penalties against Leon Draisaitl in the first period before he was eventually called for high-sticking Connor Brown. Aleksander Barkov pulling down John Klingberg moments before Reinhart scored in the second was another obvious miss by referees Francis Charron and Wes McCauley. There were others, too.

“They seem to get away with it more than we do,” Kane said. “It’s tough to find the line. They’re doing just as much stuff as we are. There seems to be a little bit more attention on our group.”

And Knoblauch can take an uncharacteristic jab at the officiating all he wants, as he did by wryly commending those wearing the orange armbands for noticing the too-many-men call after missing one against the Panthers before Marchand’s winner in the previous loss.

“They caught us there,” Knoblauch said. “I just wish they had been calling the game in Game 2 in overtime.”

It doesn’t change that the Oilers need to be better. Much better.

Much of the rest of parade to the box happened with the score out of hand. The Oilers had five players — Kane, Darnell Nurse, Trent Frederic, Mattias Ekholm and Kasperi Kapanen — sent to the dressing room before the final buzzer because of misconducts tacked on. The same went for three Panthers — Bennett, A.J. Greer and Jonah Gadjovich.

“When the game’s out of hand, you’re going to see that stuff,” McDavid said. “When you get into garbage time, those things happen, and I don’t mind when those things happen. That’s what good teams do — fight your way out of the rink.”

“We’re not going to go down without swinging,” Skinner said. “They didn’t do it when we beat them 8-1 (in Game 4 last year). They were cross-checking everybody, and they were fighting us. They were doing everything to get under our skin. It’s going to go both ways.”

Maybe so, but it’s clear the Panthers definitely got under the Oilers’ skin on Monday while crushing them on the scoreboard.

Jonah Gadjovich and Darnell Nurse faced off in the main tilt of a 10-skater brawl in the middle of the third period. (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

It was evident when Greer stole Walman’s glove in the second period and took it to the Panthers bench. Walman retaliated by squirting water in his opponent’s direction.

“I obviously did that for a reason,” Walman said. “I won’t go into the details. It’s just gamesmanship, I guess. I’ve just got to realize there’s cameras everywhere and they see that stuff.”

By the third period, Frederic broke his stick over the back of Bennett, the ultra pest who scored his league-leading 14th goal of the playoffs on a second-period breakaway. Kane slashed Verhaeghe in the face when he was down to complete a penalty hat trick.

“It’s for the Stanley Cup, you know? So, f –. There’s not an inch out there,” Walman said. “Everybody’s doing everything they can. That’s a grown man’s game out there. It’s not for the faint of heart. Guys are putting everything on the line, you know?”

Fair enough. But all that must be done legally and between the whistles. The Oilers can’t lose their cool, as annoying as the Panthers can be. It’s exactly what they want.

They played right into their hands. Do that again on Thursday in Game 4 and this series will be on the verge of being over.

“No matter who you’re playing against, if you don’t show up, teams are going to hurt you,” Skinner said. “We know that. We’ve experienced it (Monday). We’ve experienced it many times before.

“We know what we’re going to be up against. It doesn’t change how we’re going to respond again. We’ve got two days to come back and I think there’s some things that we’re going to have to change.”

Being more disciplined should be at the top of that list.

(Top photo of Jake Walman and Brad Marchand: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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