EDMONTON – On Monday night at Rogers Place, the Edmonton Oilers looked like bonafide Stanley Cup contenders, and the Vegas Golden Knights looked shell-shocked, sluggish and disconnected.
It should have been a desperate situation for both sides.
The Oilers, coming off a devastating last-second defeat and facing the proposition of wasting an early 2-0 series lead to hand home-ice advantage back to Vegas. The Golden Knights, walking into a raucous building while staring at the possibility of being pushed to the brink of elimination.
Edmonton rose to the occasion with its best game of the series and Vegas had no answers, losing 3-0 in convincing fashion.
Asked what was lacking most from Monday’s performance, which gave Edmonton a 3-1 series lead, Golden Knights star Jack Eichel thought for a moment, shook his head and replied, “Urgency, probably.”
The Oilers came out swinging from the opening bell, both literally and figuratively. They crashed the Vegas crease, rattling goaltender Adin Hill, who incited a brawl between Nicolas Hague and Trent Frederic by crashing to the ice after sticking his pad out as Mattias Janmark skated by.
Edmonton forward Adam Henrique scored twice in the opening period, and from there the Oilers clamped down defensively and watched the clock run out.
“I think that they came out in the first and had a hard push. Give us credit, I thought we stood up to them,” Eichel said. “A lot of credit to (Keegan Kolesar) and (Hague). You get behind and we obviously weren’t able to solve the goaltender.”
When it came to the hits and post-whistle scrums, the Golden Knights answered back without issue. In terms of hockey, they couldn’t. The Oilers looked faster and more determined from start to finish.
“I think we didn’t create enough pace with our offensive game,” Reilly Smith said. “We were not as fast as we needed to be through the offensive zone and the neutral zone.”
It isn’t surprising that the Oilers are the faster skating team. They’re led by the fastest man alive, wearing No. 97, and have quickness throughout the lineup. Look at every player-tracking metric that the NHL monitors and the Oilers are near the top. In the playoffs they have the fastest average speed in the league, and have had more speed bursts of 18-plus and 22-plus miles per hour than any other squad.
It sure looked like that on Monday, as they buzzed around the ice creating havoc for the Golden Knights, who struggled to pass the puck cleanly through the neutral zone.
Meanwhile, Vegas isn’t really built for speed. The Golden Knight have the tallest roster in the NHL, and one of the heaviest. They rely more on their chemistry and skill. In order to play with speed, they must be in sync and zip the puck around with precise passing.
“I think we just didn’t play as cohesive as we probably needed to,” Smith said. “We were dumping the puck in and not having all three guys forechecking… We just didn’t have the same unity with our group, so we didn’t give ourselves enough chances to create rushes and then create sustained offensive zone because of that.”
Building the early lead afforded Edmonton the luxury of sitting back and protecting it. Slow starts have been an issue for Vegas for several stretches this season, including both games in Edmonton in this series. This time it allowed the Oilers to eliminate risk from their game, play above the Golden Knights forwards in transition, and force them to dump the puck and win it back on the forecheck, which rarely happened.
“I think we’re good when we’re forechecking as a five man unit and everyone is up the ice,” Eichel said. “We were probably a little bit passive at times, and allowed them to break the puck out a little too easily. So the pressure in their end wasn’t as good as it should be, and that’s something that we need to correct.”
It’s yet another facet of the game where Edmonton’s speed factors in. Connor McDavid has the ability to back a defender off with nothing more than a few cross overs. That threat alone makes it difficult to sell out with an aggressive forecheck.
The Golden Knights have not been able to handle McDavid (Walter Tychnowicz/Imagn Images)
“You obviously want to get over their guys when they’re transitioning the puck and try to take some of their speed away,” Eichel explained. “They have a good rush game, but at the same time I don’t think that should be holding us back. When we’re up and it’s a five-man unit forechecking and getting pucks back in their end, I think it’s effective.”
The Golden Knights looked disconnected on Monday. They’d dump a puck deep into the Edmonton zone, but as they did one of the skaters would head to the bench for a line change, leaving a missing link in the forecheck that Edmonton would calmly slip through to exit the zone with ease.
“It wasn’t nearly effective enough to create offense for us,” Bruce Cassidy said. “When they have a lead that’s probably how you’re going to have to get back in the game. You’re going to have to get some forecheck turnovers.”
The Oilers came in with a clear gameplan and executed it to near perfection.
“They established physicality, they got the lead and that was probably their goal,” Cassidy said. “Then from there: Check well, and they did. They checked well. There were no easy passes through the neutral zone.”
McDavid’s speed is most obvious with the puck on his stick, but on Monday he used it away from the puck. He dashed around the ice eliminating passing lanes and killing rush chances, and the result was a convincing edge for the Oilers in shots (11-5), scoring chances (11-6) and goals (1-0) in his 14 minutes of even strength ice time, according to Natural Stat Trick.
A bigger concern for the Golden Knights is they also lost the battle in front of both nets – where their size and strength should give them the advantage. Both of Henrique’s goals came from right in front of the Vegas net. On his second, he fought his way into the blue paint and made a sensational play flipping the puck between his own legs and into the net.
On the other end of the ice Vegas didn’t get nearly enough traffic in front of Oilers’ goalie Stuart Skinner, who stopped all 23 shots he faced for his second career playoff shutout.
“We just have to be cleaner on our breakouts, and just better execution,” Eichel said. “It’s do or die now…. We did some good things in (Games) 2 and 3, right? I thought that was closer to the game that we want to play.”
The Golden Knights now face the challenge of needing three-straight wins to extend their series, against an Oilers team that just proved how good they can be when they’re at their best. And that feels like the major difference in this series.
When Vegas played its game – in Games 2 and 3 – it lost once in overtime and eked out a last-second victory. When Edmonton played its game, it looked a lot different.
That isn’t to say the Golden Knights can’t do it. That dressing room is filled with championship experience, and plenty of skill and poise to win three straight. Heck, they just did it in the last series against Minnesota.
But this is a much taller task. This is the defending Western Conference champions, led by the best player of this generation, with a perennial 100-point player at his side and a team hungry for the championship that eluded them by just a single victory a year ago.
If the Golden Knights are going to climb this mountain, winning the battle of urgency is a prerequisite, and they certainly didn’t do that in Game 5.
“We have to control our own destiny and play to win games,” Smith said. “It seemed like we didn’t have the same urgency that they had.”
(Top photo of Vegas Golden Knights goalie Adin Hill, defenseman Nicolas Hague and Edmonton Oilers left winger Zach Hyman: Walter Tychnowicz/Imagn Images)