Winnipeg Jets forward Paul Stastny celebrates his overtime winning goal against the Edmonton Oilers in game two of the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Rogers Place May 21, 2021.Perry Nelson/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
It had been billed as a series featuring the NHL’s highest-scoring forwards, but by Game 2 of the opening round of Stanley Cup play between the Edmonton Oilers and the Winnipeg Jets, a familiar, historical playoff storyline had taken over.
It’s all about the goaltending.
With the Jets’ 28-year-old Connor Hellebuyck and the Oilers’ 39-year-old Mike Smith at either end of the ice, the opening two games of this series had become who will score the winner rather than who will score most. The two goaltenders have been simply brilliant.
Friday’s game at Rogers Place went into overtime, both teams scoreless after 60 minutes of play.
Connor McDavid held off the scoreboard as unlikely names play MVP for Jets
It took just over four minutes of overtime for the game to be decided, when Winnipeg forward Paul Stastny launched a high floater from the right boards that was screened and fell in behind Smith to give the visitors a 1-0 win.
The goal put the Jets in the surprising position of being up two games to none over the Oilers. The series now switches to Winnipeg for Game 3 on Sunday.
Oilers head coach Dave Tippett elected to go with his “nuclear option,” as many had predicted, placing his two superstars, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, on the same line. He also added in Jesse Puljujarvi, the big forward who had scored the Oilers’ only goal in Game 1.
The change had its intended effect, the line moving faster and producing more chances in the first two shifts than the two stars had seen in most of the previous game. All that was missing was a number on the scoreboard.
“There’s no reason to panic,” McDavid, the NHL’s leading scorer in the regular season, told reporters after the morning skate. He viewed Game 2 as “an opportunity to win and move on to Winnipeg all tied up.”
“I’m not worried,” Draisaitl, the league’s No. 2 point scorer, had added. “[The chances are] going to go in. We’re not worried.”
The strategy was clearly to get McDavid, this year’s presumed MVP, and Draisaitl, last year’s league MVP, going in the series. Both had been held pointless in Wednesday’s 4-1 loss (two of the goals into an empty net) to the Jets. McDavid had managed but two shots on net, Draisaitl four.
Over the regular season, on the other hand, McDavid had scored seven goals and 22 points in nine games against Winnipeg, while Draisaitl picked up a dozen of his 84 points against the Jets.
How the Jets were able to shut the two superstars down – without the services of Winnipeg’s best two-way player, Nikolaj Ehlers – was a surprise to all who had anticipated the high-scoring Oilers would run over their Prairie opponent.
The secret to checking McDavid, Jets head coach Paul Maurice volunteered in the morning, is “all timing and position. … If you’re a half a step behind him it’s over. If you give him two feet of ice, you’ve got a real problem. If he’s accelerating towards you and you have a gap, that’s a real bad match. Trying to time and match Connor’s speed is the key piece. And even with that, you’re not getting it right every time.”
Maurice accurately predicted a much different game. “It will be a way faster game,” he said earlier in the day. “There was tension and nerves from both teams in the first period in the first game. The game didn’t get to the north-south speed you’ll see tonight. More straight lines, more speed.
“I think the Oilers’ transition game will get a lot better, their D will get up the ice a lot more which will lead to a bigger impact. When the speed gets amped up, the hits get bigger and I also think they’ll throw more pucks to our net. There will be a lot of whistles in the blue paint.”
That’s pretty much how it went – with the obvious exception that the scoring remained much the same in Game 2 as it had been in Game 1: negligible.
Tippett had earlier suggested the sputtering opening game of this best-of-seven series was due to “early-series jitters.” The pace Friday night at Rogers Place was much quicker, the passes more certain, the chances superior, despite the lack of scoring. That, obviously, was due to the stellar play of the two goaltenders, Smith and Hellebuyck.
Hellebuyck was particularly sharp when the Jets took two penalties in the third period, allowing Edmonton a stretch of five-on-three hockey. The Oilers pressed as hard as possible, but it proved impossible.
Tippett said prior to the game that his Oilers were just looking for a goal, any goal. It didn’t need to be an end-to-end highlight-reel rush by McDavid, but one would certainly be appreciated.
“I’ll take all the pretty goals we can get,” Tippett said to laughter. “I want all of them. I want to be greedy. We want pretty goals and ugly goals. We’ll take all we can get. If somebody wants to score a pretty goal, I’ll take that, too. If somebody wants to grind one in the net or deflect it in the net, I’m good with that, too.”
They didn’t get a pretty goal or an ugly one. They got a Jets goal.
Connor McDavid had hoped to “move on to Winnipeg all tied up.” Instead, the Oilers will head for Winnipeg already in a deep hole no one predicted.
Welcome to Stanley Cup playoff unpredictability.
Special to The Globe and Mail