Winnipeg Jets left wing Pierre-Luc Dubois leaps over a shot in front of Edmonton Oilers goaltender Mike Smith in the third period in game three of the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Bell MTS Place in Winnipeg on May 23, 2021.James Carey Lauder/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.”
Who better to speak for the Edmonton Oilers than Queen Victoria on her holiday weekend? She may not have been a hockey fan – the game wasn’t even invented when she took to the throne – but she certainly was saying what the Oilers were thinking as they came into Winnipeg down two games to none in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Falling to 3-0 in this opening series would be a disaster for the team with the two best players in the NHL over the past couple of seasons.
But it happened – in as dramatic, impossible a fashion as could be imagined.
In a game that couldn’t be more different from the opening two won by Winnipeg, the Jets mounted a three-goal, third-period comeback to tie the game at 4-4 and taking the game, that seemed out of reach after two periods, to an unexpected overtime.
In a remarkably dramatic four-goal comeback, the Jets somehow managed to overcome a 4-1 Oilers lead and take the match 5-4.
The game was decided by Nikolaj Ehlers just 9:13 into overtime, when Paul Stastny won a faceoff in the Edmonton end and Ehlers was able to rip a high wrist shot past Oilers goaltender Mike Smith.
The two teams will meet again Monday in Winnipeg, with the underdog Jets able to close out the series.
Oilers head coach Dave Tippett had conceded prior to the match that he would be changing things up in the hopes of sparking a team where the MVPs had been largely MIA.
“You keep tweaking things to try to get you over the top,” Tippett said.
By puck drop, the only line he hadn’t changed up was the one he began Game 2 with, last year’s MVP Leon Draisaitl with this year’s presumed MVP Connor McDavid and Jesse Puljujarvi. Even that line Tippett was fiddling with early in the opening period.
McDavid had told reporters earlier in the day that the team “had a bit of a regroup. We got to find a way to get a win. … If we can find a way to get them to chase the game a little bit …”
And that is exactly what happened early in the game. The Oilers used their speed and desperation to dramatically alter Game 3 from the two grinding matches that preceded it. McDavid and Draisaitl seemed possessed, and their frenetic play soon paid off.
At the 6:33 mark of the first period, McDavid slipped a pass across to defenceman Slater Koekkoek, who took a quick shot toward the Winnipeg net that pinballed through several bodies. Draisaitl, standing nearly behind the net, was able to reach back and tuck the loose puck in behind Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck.
Less than three minutes later, Draisaitl struck again while his team had a two-man advantage, the Jets’ Pierre-Luc Dubois off for hooking and, shortly after, Nate Thompson caught for a slash. McDavid set up Kailer Yamamoto for a shot that was blocked, but Draisaitl jumped on the rebound and again beat Hellebuyck.
McDavid and Draisaitl, who had gone scoreless in the first two games of the series, now had two points apiece in the first period of Game 3.
The Jets were missing their fanatical supporters at Bell MTS Place, the famous whiteout of twirling towels now replaced with white tarps. They seemed lost in the opening period but slowly found themselves in the second.
Ehlers, returning to the Jets lineup after missing multiple games with a shoulder injury, showed his usual speed and playmaking early on. On an Oilers power play, he took a pass from Dubois and scored on a hard shot that beat Smith high to the glove side, bringing Winnipeg to within a goal of Edmonton.
“My time has come,” Ehlers had said prior to the game. “I’m ready to go.”
“His speed, his creativity, his offensive game is huge,” Jets alternate captain Mark Scheifele had said of the return of Ehlers to the lineup. “He’s always energetic. He’s always ready to go. He’s always eager to get playing”
Smith had been brilliant in the Edmonton net prior to Ehlers’s goal, stopping Winnipeg’s Mason Appleton on a clear breakaway and stopping multiple screened shots from the Jets.
“He’s been playing great,” McDavid said of Smith earlier in the day. “He’s done his job; now the team’s got to do ours.”
This first Winnipeg comeback did not last long, however, as barely a minute later the Oilers struck back on a new line combination featuring McDavid, Draisaitl and energetic disturber Zack Kassian. McDavid rushed the puck up the ice and slipped a pass to Draisaitl, who deftly hit Kassian roaring in from the right side, and Kassian beat Hellebuyck with a shot that caught the far corner of the net.
Draisaitl and McDavid now had three points each, ending the awkward drought.
“Those two guys are pretty fantastic hockey players,” said the Jets’ Scheifele, “and you give them their time and space, they’re going to make you pay.”
That’s exactly what happened this night in downtown Winnipeg – for a little more than two periods.
Less than five minutes into the final period, the Oilers went up 4-1 when forward Jujhar Khaira tipped an Adam Larsson point shot past Hellebuyck.
Earlier in the day, Khaira had told the media that the secret to beating Hellebuyck, last year’s Vezina Trophy winner as the league’s top goaltender, was “getting to him, those little scrums in front.” What Khaira wanted to see was “ugly goals.” His goal wasn’t, a deft tip of a hard wrist shot from the blueline.
But then began one of the greatest comebacks in recent Stanley Cup play. Past the halfway point of the third period the Jets struck again when, on a power play, Mathieu Perreault was able to get two swipes at a puck in Smith’s crease and scored through a forest of legs.
Shortly after, the Jets again came within one goal of the Oilers when team captain Blake Wheeler slipped a rebound past Smith.
Barely a breath later, 16 seconds, defenceman Josh Morrissey scored a weak goal on a wrist shot that Smith blew to tie the game at 4-4.
As Oilers coach Tippett had said, “Close doesn’t get you anything if you’re not winning games.”
Queen Victoria would not be amused.
Special to The Globe and Mail