Evan Bouchard scored 5:38 into overtime, and the Edmonton Oilers rallied to defeat the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Friday. The result tied the best-of-seven series at 1-1, with Game 3 scheduled for Sunday in Edmonton. Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid each had one goal and three assists, and Mattias Ekholm also scored for the Oilers.
Draisaitl was listed as a game-time decision earlier in the day due to an undisclosed injury. The Canucks got a goal and an assist from Nikita Zadorov, while Elias Pettersson scored his first playoff goal and Brock Boeser also scored. Stuart Skinner stopped 16 of 19 shots for the Oilers, while Arturs Silovs made 27 saves on 31 shots.
On Friday, the Canucks scored first thanks to an early man advantage. With Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the box for tripping, J.T Miller geared up and appeared to be set to take a booming shot from the faceoff circle. Instead, he sliced a pass across the slot to Pettersson, who fired a quick snap shot past Skinner, who was out of position, 4:16 into the game. After Tyler Myers was punished for hooking, Edmonton’s formidable power play went into action before the first intermission.
Silovs made a pad save on McDavid, but he was unable to keep the Oilers captain off the scoreboard for long. Stationed at the goal line, the superstar center passed to Draisaitl in the slot, who shot it in to level the game at 1-1 with his sixth playoff goal 10:56 into the first period. Edmonton and Vancouver both went one-for-three on the power play.
Silovs prevented the Oilers from carrying the lead into the locker room with some last-second heroics at the end of the first period. Ekholm launched a long-range slap shot that the rookie goaltender caught with his glove. He couldn’t stop the puck, though, and Hyman was there to get the rebound. Silovs then dove across the net, stopping the sniper from the side. The ice opened up early in the second period when Edmonton’s Derek Ryan was sent to the box for interference and Vancouver’s Nils Hoglander was called for slashing, resulting in two minutes of 4-on-4 hockey.
Carson Soucy put a shot on goal from inside the blue line 53 seconds into the session, and Boeser tipped it past Skinner from the middle of the slot. His fifth goal of the playoffs put the Canucks ahead 2-1. The lead lasted 23 seconds.
With both teams still down a man, Draisaitl delivered a pass from the blue line to Ekholm, who fired past Silovs from the high hash markers, tying the game at 2-2 with his second of the postseason. Zadorov gave the home team the lead again at 18:17 in the second half. The bruising defenseman picked up a puck from Miller in the neutral zone, sprinted down the ice, and blasted a wrist shot that went up and under the crossbar to make it 3-2. The goal was Zadorov’s fourth in the playoffs.
McDavid used his freakish pace to tie the game once more 5:27 into the third. The great centre picked up a contested puck in the neutral zone, raced down the ice ahead of two Canucks defencemen, and sent a shot under Silovs’ blocker for his second post-season goal. Edmonton pressed for the game winner late, confining Vancouver into its own end for long minutes and outshooting the home team 15-2 in the third period, but were forced to settle for overtime. Bouchard scored the game-winning goal 5:38 into overtime with a shot from near the boards that skittered by Silovs.
Premiers from British Columbia and Alberta watched the game together. The event also brought two provincial politicians together on Friday, when B.C. Premier David Eby and his Alberta counterpart, Danielle Smith, watched event 2 from a private suite at Rogers Arena in Vancouver. Several people were in the suite, but the two premiers did not sit next to one other.
Last week, Smith challenged Eby to a bet on the outcome of the best-of-seven second-round Stanley Cup playoff series via social media. Eby accepted the wager, which requires the loser of the all-Canadian clash to make a statement prepared by the winner in their province legislature while wearing the opponent’s jersey.
