Connor McDavid registered two goals and two assists, enhancing his historic postseason, while Evan Bouchard added three assists to help the Edmonton Oilers fend off elimination by defeating the Florida Panthers 5-3 in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday night.
Connor Brown, Zach Hyman, and Corey Perry also scored for the Oilers, who took control by netting the game’s first three goals and then held on late to reduce Florida’s lead in the series to 3-2. Stuart Skinner made 30 saves for the Oilers, and McDavid sealed the victory with an empty-net goal in the final seconds.
Evan Rodrigues and Matthew Tkachuk each contributed a goal and an assist for Florida, while Oliver Ekman-Larsson also scored for the Panthers. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 19 shots for Florida, whose 30-year wait for the franchise’s first Stanley Cup title will last at least three more days.
Game 6 is scheduled for Friday night in Edmonton.
McDavid’s four points elevated his total to 42 in these playoffs, the fourth-highest in a single postseason in NHL history. The only players ahead of him are Wayne Gretzky with 47 points in 1985, Mario Lemieux with 44 in 1991, and Gretzky again with 43 in 1988.
McDavid will have at least one more game — and, he hopes, two — to add to his total. If necessary, Game 7 will be held in Sunrise on Monday night.
This was the first time in Panthers history that they played a home game with the chance to win the Cup. A sellout crowd, with some paying more than $1,000 per ticket on the secondary market, pushed Florida’s total season attendance over 1 million for the first time.
However, the Oilers prevented them from clinching the title.
Edmonton entered the night having scored 10 of the series’ last 11 goals — a 2-0 third period in its Game 3 loss, followed by an 8-1 victory in Game 4.
The Oilers continued their strong performance, particularly in special-teams play.
Game 5 began similarly to Game 4, with Edmonton scoring a short-handed goal. Brown, who assisted on a short-handed goal on Saturday night, scored unassisted in this game to give the Oilers an early lead. Florida’s Niko Mikkola took an interference penalty as time expired in the first period, which proved costly.
Hyman made it 2-0 with two seconds remaining on the resulting power play at the start of the second period, and McDavid extended Edmonton’s lead to 3-0 with a goal from a difficult angle three minutes later.
Historically, a three-goal lead in the Stanley Cup Final has been secure; no team had lost after leading by three in a title-series game since Edmonton against Carolina in 2006. Teams holding such leads were 39-0 until now.
The Panthers made a comeback attempt, reducing the deficit to 4-2 by the end of the second period with goals from Tkachuk and Rodrigues, sandwiching Perry’s first goal of the playoffs, which was set up by a brilliant pass from McDavid. Ekman-Larsson scored early in the third, but Florida could not find the equalizer. Skinner’s solid goaltending ensured the series would return to Edmonton for Game 6.
