Montreal (AFP) – Brad Marchand scored a breakaway goal at 8:04 of the second overtime, lifting the Florida Panthers to a 5-4 victory over the Edmonton Oilers that leveled the NHL Stanley Cup Final at one game apiece on Friday. Marchand’s game-winner in Edmonton was his second goal of the contest. His first had given the Panthers a 4-3 lead in the second period, an advantage that stood up until Edmonton’s Corey Perry scored with 18 seconds left in the third to force overtime.
Anton Lundell gained control of the puck in the Panthers zone and fed a flying Marchand, who kept control despite a backcheck by Leon Draisaitl and somehow beat Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner for the victory two days after the Oilers’ overtime win in game one. “It’s just obviously a fortuitous bounce and we’ll take it,” Marchand told broadcaster TNT. Teammate Evan Rodrigues said it was the kind of play the Panthers have come to expect from 37-year-old Marchand, who was acquired from the Boston Bruins in March and who now has 10 career goals in Stanley Cup Final games.
Related news
“A hell of a play by him. He had a backcheck on him and still found a way to put it in,” Rodrigues said. “Clutch, right?” he added. “No moment seems to be too big for him.” The best-of-seven championship series—a rematch of last year’s Final won by the Panthers—now shifts to Florida for games three and four on Monday and Thursday.
– **Frenetic first** – Edmonton emerged from a frenetic first period with a 3-2 lead. Red-hot Sam Bennett put the Panthers up 1-0 at 2:07 of the first period, grabbing his 13th goal of the playoffs—his 12th on the road. Evander Kane was called for high-sticking, and Nate Schmidt found Bennett, whose goal ended the Oilers’ nine-game streak of scoring first.
Kane atoned with a goal that made it 1-1, and Evan Bouchard put the Oilers up 2-1, ripping a shot past Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky after his initial shot was blocked by Aleksander Barkov. Seth Jones had pulled the Panthers level at 2-2 when Bennett was called for goaltender interference, and 24 seconds into the ensuing power play, Draisaitl scored to make it 3-2 on a stunning pass from Connor McDavid. McDavid squeezed past Barkov and wrong-footed Aaron Ekblad before finding Draisaitl—the overtime goal hero in game one—in the right circle. It was the highest-scoring first period in a Stanley Cup Final game since the Sharks and Penguins combined for five goals in game five in 2016.
Dmitry Kulikov pulled the Panthers level at 8:23 of the second with a wrist shot from point. After Florida’s Niko Mikkola was called for holding, Marchand, fed by Lundell, scored on a short-handed breakaway to put the Panthers up 4-3, and they took that lead into the final period. The lead stood up until the waning seconds of the third when 40-year-old Perry struck for his ninth career goal in a Stanley Cup Final. Both teams had chances to end it in the first overtime, but goalies Bobrovsky and Skinner stood tall to force a second extra session for the first time in the title series since 2020.
© 2024 AFP
