Game Five: Edmonton Oilers at Florida Panthers (Florida leads series 3-1)
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Location: Amerant Bank Arena
How to Watch: ABC, ESPN+, SN, CBC, TVAS
The site to follow: Litter Box Cats (Panthers) Oilers Nation (Oilers)
Betting favorite per ESPN – Florida Panthers -155
Do you remember our last preview where we talked about it being an open-and-shut case for Sergei Bobrovsky winning the Conn Smythe? Well, sorry about that Officer Bob. The Panthers backstop had quite the rough night as he allowed 5 goals on 16 shots in the 8-1 Oilers victory. So, unless he comes back with a shutout tonight, chances are someone else will be picking up the MVP award. I still don’t think Connor McDavid has done enough to earn it in a losing effort, but if he keeps rolling out the big nights (he had 1 goal, 3 assists in Game 4) and pulls this to a Game 6 or, god forbid, a Game 7, I’ll be willing to listen those arguements.
Florida fans are likely okay with the Game 4 loss, blanketing themselves in the belief that it is “better to win it on home ice”. However, such a convincing win by Edmonton, especially after they had been denied just about all of the puck luck in the first three games had to allow just the thinnest of slivers of doubt to creep into the minds of the Panther faithful.
Doubt me do you? Well, I happen to remember a certain Lightning fanbase that took a 3-2 overtime loss in Game 4 to the Montreal Canadiens back in 2021 a little too hard. Sadly, the comments on our game thread are lost forever thanks to the boot we were given by a certain multi-media company, but I remember some “the sky is falling moments” that were quickly vanquished in Game 5 thanks to Andrei Vasilevskiy and Ross Colton.
Which, as you may remember, happened on home ice. So, that was nice.
Look, the Panthers are going to win this thing. Honestly, they are the better team, and for some reason, post season blowouts seem easier to shake off than overtime losses, so I fully expect them to pull off the victory tonight. One thing to keep an eye on is how the goaltenders are doing on shots from the inner slot.
Can Bobrovsky do it again on home ice? He basically stole Game 1 for the Panthers and may need to do it again tonight. One thing that the Oilers were able to do on Saturday was generate shots from high-danger areas. Natural Stat Trick tabbed them with 10 high-danger chances at 5v5 in Game 4, the most they had since Game 1 (which, again, you can argue was the Bobrovsky game). In Games 2 and 3 they had just 8 combined. More importantly, NST registered three of their goals, with two of them coming against Bobrovsky, as high-danger. So, for the first time in the series they finished off those chances.
Finishing off those chances is the path to the Oilers victory. If they can keep putting those pucks behind Bobrovsky, they have a fighter’s chance at dragging the series back to Canada. If Florida gets back to keeping the crease clean, then it will be over and the Stinkin’ Panthers will be lifting Lord Stanley’s chalice. It’s really that simple.
