Waking Up With The Edmonton Oilers- Nerve Racking Final Minutes, But Oilers Move On To Western Final

Last night the Edmonton Oilers proved that they are a team that the rest of the NHL should be scared of facing moving forward in the playoffs. The way they showed up in that game 7 proves that this team is ready to make a deeper run than any Oilers team in recent memory.

Going into the game last night I noted that if the Oilers played their game and were mistake free they would walk away with the game easily. That is what happened for the first 2 periods, but when the Canucks started pushing in the 3rd the Oilers got off their game and made mistakes that let the Canucks back in the game.

Getting goals from Cody Ceci, Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins all in the second period the Oilers built themselves a nice 3 goal lead heading into the 3rd period. In that period though the Canucks started to chip away at that lead, scoring a goal off of a Ryan McLeod give away and another off a defensive zone faceoff loss.

These two goals gave the Canucks around 5 minutes to tie the game, but the Oilers were able to lock it down after Knoblauch called a timeout after the second goal. Before the time out the team was running around and you could tell that they nervous, but after the timeout what ever was said in it seemed to calm them down. In the final minutes of play the Canucks didn’t have any major chances against.

Early in the series the Oilers went away from Skinner, but went back to him for game 6 and 7. Last night Skinner played an okay game, which was all he needed to. He made a few big saves early in the game to keep it tied at one, but the team in front of him played good in front of him. Only allowing only 17 shots against the whole game.

Next Up The Dallas Stars

Now that the Oilers have dispatched the Canucks they move on to their next opponent, the Dallas Stars. The Stars so far this playoffs have beaten the Vegas Golden Knights and the Colorado Avalanche. No offense to the LA Kings or the Vancouver, but the Stars have faced much hard competition than the Oilers.

In my opinion though the Oilers are the best team the Stars have faced, which makes sense, cause as the playoffs go on the weaker teams will get weeded out. For the Oilers the Stars are a completely different team than the Canucks and a much better team at that. The Stars have arguably the best depth in the NHL, whereas the Oilers have the best high end talent.

This is going to be a good series to watch and I am very much looking forward to it. If the Oilers want to win they can’t take any nights off and will need to be at their best for every second of this series, if they are not they can kiss the cups hopes goodbye.