Edmonton— Todd Marchant scored one of the Edmonton Oilers‘ most iconic goals in their Stanely Cup playoff history. One that is still revered in these parts today.
It was Game 7 of the 1997 Western Conference Quarterfinals, and Marchant, then a 23-year-old forward in just his third full NHL season, scored the series-clinching goal at 12:26 of overtime. to eliminate the Dallas Stars.
Marchant took a pass from Doug Weight, beat Stars defenseman Grant Ledyard, who stumbled while trying to retreat, and beat goaltender Andy Moog’s blocker from close range to give the Oilers a 4-3 victory.
“My kids have watched the goal since and point out that I turned my back to the puck, and when Dougie got the puck, I just turned around and started skating,” said Marchant, who is now the director of player development and a Senior advisor to the San Jose Sharks. “To be honest, all I remember is Dougie giving me the puck in the neutral zone and I started skating as fast as I could. Grant Ledyard is a guy that I know because he played in Buffalo and lived in Buffalo, and he kind of blew the wheel, and it’s no big secret that in my career I had a lot of breakaways that I didn’t convert on. ‘Slats’ (Oilers general manager Glen Sather) was always on top of me and I was wondering if he was going to score on these breakaways.”
On April 29, 1997, Marchant scored on his breakaway.
“I didn’t think about it, that’s probably what happened. I kept skating and saw an opening on the blocker side and was able to put it in there,” she said. “One thing I don’t think people see after I score is that Dan McGillis tackled me and gave me a kiss. “It was just the moment.”
The Oilers entered that series against the Stars as big underdogs. Edmonton was the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference after finishing the regular season with just 81 points (36-37-9), 23 behind Dallas (48-26-8), which was the No. 2 seed.
“We were a bunch of underdogs, a bunch of no-name kids, and we were going against a Goliath team like the Dallas Stars,” Marchant said. “If you look at the squads on paper, there is no way we should have been in that series. It should have been a 4-0 series. I had a chance to play with (defenseman) Darryl Sydor in Columbus, who was on that Dallas team, and he said they expected it to be a quick series and they were looking forward to facing Colorado, because the big rivalry with them was with Colorado”.
Despite the perceived mismatch, the Oilers performed strongly in the biggest moments.
In the third game, they rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the third period before winning 4-3 in overtime to take a 2-1 series lead. After Dallas responded with a win in Game 4, Edmonton went on the road and emerged with a 1-0 victory in Game 5 on a goal by Ryan Smyth 22 seconds into the second overtime.
Although the Oilers would lose at home in Game 6, Marchant’s heroics in the deciding game would send the losers to the conference semifinals, where they would play the Avalanche instead of the Stars.
“I think when we got to Game 7, we looked at it like we were in a winner-take-all game, and if someone had told us at the beginning of the series that we were going to be in this situation, ‘We’d take it.'” Marchant said. “I’ve watched that game over the last few years and there are some key moments in the game, and one that doesn’t get coverage is (Andrei) Kovalenko’s goal at the end of the second half. It was a 2-on-1 and I shot the puck to ‘Kovy’, and he took a one-time shot and put it in the net.
“I think there was less than a minute left in the period (20 seconds) and we tied the game (3-3). “There were little moments in the game that people forget.”
Another moment that people do remember came right before Marchant’s series-clinching goal, when Oilers goalie Curtis Joseph made a diving stop on Stars forward Joe Nieuwendyk.
“I remember trying to put the puck away and I missed,” Joseph said. “Joey was being tackled when he shot, and I just lunged and hit him with the bottom of my blocker. Luckily, he didn’t go anywhere, he just fell down and I played a little shell game with my hands. He was under there. I was very lucky. I could have gone in. Moments later, we went down and scored.”
Joseph finished with 38 saves in the game, but Nieuwendyk’s was easily the biggest and the one Oilers fans mention the most every time he returns to Edmonton.
“That was an unbelievable save for Joe Nieuwendyk, and the way things played out, on the next shift the goal happened,” Marchant said. “There are a lot of things that happened along the way. “If they hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be talking about that goal.”
However, 27 years later, that goal is still being talked about.
“I don’t think people really knew who to celebrate with,” Marchant said. “You see the celebration and you have some guys who came up to the pile with me, who was at the end, and then other guys who came up to ‘Cujo’ (Joseph). It was a magical moment in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and you see it every year. Every year there is a magical moment and for us that was the moment.”
NHL.com staff writer Mike Zeisberger contributed to this report.
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