There will be no sweep in the Stanley Cup Final. After losing the first three games, the Edmonton Oilers finally broke through on offense for an 8-1 victory over the Florida Panthers in Game 4, and Connor McDavid erased one of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL playoff records in the process.
Edmonton combined for just four goals in the first three games of the series, and surpassed that total in just two periods on Saturday night. The party at Rogers Place started early when Mattias Janmark scored a shorthanded goal just 3:11 into the game, and the Oilers never looked back after that.
The entire Oilers roster was fantastic in Game 4, but McDavid was truly exceptional and needed to get his team one loss away from elimination. McDavid not only scored his first goal of the series in the second period, but he also tallied three assists in the game. That gave him 32 assists in these playoffs, and broke Gretzky’s record for most helpers in a single postseason.
The rest of Edmonton’s big guns, who had been quiet for the first three games, finally got going in this one.
Darnell Nurse’s first finish in the playoffs was 5-1. The Oilers’ first goal in the Stanley Cup Final gave them a 6-1 lead, and that also happened to be Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ first goal of the series.
Leon Draisaitl, who entered the game with zero points in this series, had two assists in Game 4. Zach Hyman has yet to find the back of the net, but he also found the stat sheet with a pair of assists.
The Panthers had an unusually weak defense throughout the game, allowing more goals in this game than any other throughout the season. Sergei Bobrovsky, who seemed unbeatable in the first three games, was pulled after allowing five goals on 16 shots.
To be fair, the players in front of Bobrovsky didn’t help him much. The Oilers were torching Florida all night, and they had all kinds of time and space to work in the offensive zone.
The result of all those defensive failures was a seven-goal loss, tied for the second-largest margin of defeat in a Stanley Cup Final game. Only the Pittsburgh Penguins‘ 8-0 rout of the Minnesota North Stars in 1991 was worse.
This is now the second time the Panthers have suffered an 8-1 loss in the finals; the last time was against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 2 of the 1996 Stanley Cup Final.
Florida has to overcome this because they will have another chance to clinch the Stanley Cup in Game 5, which will be played Tuesday night at Amerant Bank Arena.
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