Edmonton Oilers will lose until they stop beating themselves

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Hockey is a brutal game. One moment of confusion or indecision, the puck is in the back of your net. Hockey happens fast. One bounce of the puck, one tiny slip up, and your Stanley Cup dreams are in ruins.

This is the story of the 2024 Edmonton Oilers. A brilliant attacking team, a solid enough defensive team and an incredibly resilient team, but one that continues to be haunted by the most mundane of mistakes, and in the critical moments of a must-win Game 3, mundane mistakes by its best players.

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It’s late in the first period and the Oilers have three men back against three Florida attackers on the first goal against. Edmonton’s talisman Connor McDavid moves to the puck instead of his own check, Florida d-man Gustav Forsling. Forsling is left unmarked. He takes Aleksander Barkov’s pass and with time and space to pick his play, makes a rifling pass to Sam Reinhart, who directs it in past Stuart Skinner.

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Next up it’s Skinner, the comeback hero of Edmonton’s win over the Dallas now, now called in the second period of Game 3 to make a basic play, nothing special, simply controlling a dump-in behind the net. But Skinner fails to control it. He bobbles the bouncing puck and gets caught out of his crease. A Panthers forward pounces on it and a split second later Vladimir Taransenko slams it into vacated net. It’s a backbreaker of a mistake, the kind of goalie error and gifted goal against that a team rarely recovers from in a game, even a team with Edmonton’s spirit and skill.

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Five minutes later it’s Darnell Nurse, again Darnell Nurse, who has had long periods of strong two-way play for the Oilers through the years but whose struggles are epic this playoff season. Under the heavy Florida forecheck he tries to skate the puck up the middle of the ice, then pass it, but his pass is picked off by Matthew Tkachuk. Mocked in the first period by the Edmonton throng with a rink-wide chant of “Turtle!,” Tkachuk rapidly moves the puck through Nurse to Sam Bennett. Bennett fires in a wicked shot to make it 3-1 Florida.

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Finally it’s Mattias Ekholm, oh so steady Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton’s most reliable two-way d-man most of the season, but now caught watching the play unfold in the Florida end and, just for one moment, he watches too long as Florida breaks out on a 2-on-1. The Panthers execute to perfection, Evan Rodrigues beating Evan Bouchard on the pass, Barkov finishing with a nasty strike that beats Skinner, 4-1 Florida.

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And, despite an unlikely comeback that comes within one monster Sergei Bobrovsky save on Ryan McLeod of Edmonton tying the game, the Oilers lose 4-3. They are now down three games to zero in the Stanley Cup Final. Only once in Stanley Cup Finals history has any team come back from such a dark place.

Edmonton had 19 Grade A shots to eight for Florida in Game 3, but Bobrovsky the Brilliant finished off what Edmonton’s mistakes started.

That is how the Oilers played. That is how they lost.

And that is how the Oilers will continue to lose until they stop beating themselves.

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At the Cult of Hockey

LEAVINS: Player grades in Game 3 loss

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