LOS ANGELES — The Edmonton Oilers recorded a measly 13 shots on net, tying a franchise playoff worst and establishing a new low in the Connor McDavid era. They scored just one goal.
Yet, they’ve maybe never looked more like a Stanley Cup-calibre team.
That might sound bizarre given they had to eke out a 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Kings in Game 4. But it’s the truth.
“It’s not the prettiest way to win a game,” McDavid said, “but one that was big nonetheless.”
The Oilers grabbed a massive 3-1 series advantage and now have a chance to close it out in Edmonton on Wednesday, but it was the way they won that was just as impressive.
Don’t let the fact the Oilers were outshot by 20 fool you. They were detailed and unrelenting without the puck.
“We didn’t have too many shots, but defensively we kept a lot to the outside,” said winger Corey Perry, now a veteran of 200 playoff games. “They had some shots, but I thought our D did a heck of a job of Stu (Skinner) clearing pucks and eliminating second opportunities.”
This was not your typical Oilers win.
No, it wasn’t McDavid or Leon Draisaitl or Zach Hyman or even Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Evander Kane who propelled them like they so often do — and did in a lopsided 6-1 Game 3 win.
Instead, this game belonged to players who are seldom recognized — and are usually criticized when they are. The stars followed their lead.
“If you have different ways to win, then you win more games. That’s the reality,” Hyman said. “The margins in the playoffs are so tight.
“Every year I’ve been here, it’s felt like we could have done more. Having more options on how to win a game, that’s huge. We’re going to have to win more games like this.”
When it comes to Game 4, consider the likes of Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci here — blueliners who held down the fort and prevented the Kings from doing much of any damage. Ceci led the Oilers in ice time at 22:35.
But also think about two others, goaltender Stuart Skinner and defenceman Vincent Desharnais. They once sat in a living room in Wichita, Kan., in December 2019 while toiling in the ECHL and discussed how they could fix their hockey careers.
Those two might have been the most crucial to Sunday’s win.
“We’ve come a long way,” Skinner said. “It’s pretty special for us to even be on the same team (five) years later (after) being in the dark days, being in the dungeon. Going through that together is extremely helpful as friends and as teammates, but also individually.”
Their performances were a stark about-face considering what went down against the Kings in Game 4 last year.
Skinner was pulled after the first period when he allowed three goals on 11 shots. Desharnais made errors on all three goals and was benched in the second period.
“If you listen to any of (GM) Kenny’s (Holland) pressers, the biggest growth on our team was going to be from within,” Hyman said. “With those two guys, that’s the key — the growth from within.”
“It’s almost like they’re an inch taller,” Ekholm said. “Their chests are out.”
Stuart Skinner and Corey Perry embrace after Sunday’s 1-0 Game 4 win over the Kings in which Skinner made 33 saves for his first playoff shutout. (Yannick Peterhans / USA Today)
Skinner’s turnaround in this series has been so impactful to the Oilers’ success.
He had some hard-luck bounces that went against him over the first two games in Edmonton, but he still allowed nine goals on 63 shots. Since then, he’s surrendered just a single Los Angeles tally — a Drew Doughty chance in Game 3 he had no chance to stop — and made 60 stops.
He recorded his first playoff shutout on Sunday, making 33 saves.
“That’s the sign of a really good goaltender,” Ekholm said. “You can’t always control 82 games and playoffs and be on top of your game every night. But you can always control how you rebound and respond to those games. That’s a strength of his.”
Skinner now has a .919 save percentage through four games. In Los Angeles, he looked more like the goaltender who was the Calder Trophy runner-up and had Vezina Trophy-like numbers from late November onward.
“He’s shown he’s taken steps as a goaltender,” Ekholm said. “He’s way calmer. Positionally, he’s very sound right now. You have to really make a great play to beat him, which is a great feeling for us knowing that he’s the backbone of our team.”
And then there’s Desharnais.
His Game 4 last year crushed him. It took a postgame talk from Ekholm to get over it in the moment and a summer yoga retreat to reset his mind.
All Desharnais has done this season is steadily improve, going from an uncertainty to making the team out of training camp to getting a trial run in the top four in March. Assistant coach Paul Coffey wanted him protecting the lead for the last minute of the game as part of his 17:21 of ice time.
“Vinny’s been one of our best — if not our best — D-men we’ve had so far this series,” Ekholm said.
“I wouldn’t want to play against Big Vin,” McDavid said. “He’s big. He skates better than people give him credit for. He’s hard around the net. He’s hard on the PK.
“He’s like an eclipse on that side when he comes across. He’s been great for us.”
GO DEEPER
How Vincent Desharnais became the Oilers’ unlikely playoff X-factor
It’s like his Game 4 against the Kings from last April is ancient history.
“I don’t think as much. I just play,” Desharnais said. “We’re playing a very good team. It’s the playoffs in the best league in the world. Mistakes are going to happen. The biggest thing is just to let go and be ready for the next shift.”
It wasn’t just Skinner and Desharnais. It wasn’t just Nurse and Ceci. This was a complete defensive buy-in from every player on the roster.
Skinner was sound. Those around him made his life easier than it could have been.
“The guys were grinding for me,” Skinner said. “We truly played a man’s game out there. I’m really proud of the group.”
Everyone knows the Oilers can score in bunches — usually with ease. They netted 13 goals in their two wins in this series. Heck, they netted four in a Game 2 overtime loss. That wasn’t the case on Sunday. Playing on a rink where the puck hopped as if it were a bouncy ball — “It was, uh, ice,” Perry said, laughing, when asked about the conditions — sure didn’t do them any favours, though.
The Oilers’ elite power play capitalized on the one chance it got in the second period. McDavid zipped a cross-seam pass to Draisaitl, who then fed Evan Bouchard at the point. Bouchard stepped in and unloaded a blast from 44 feet, which beat Kings goalie David Rittich inside the left post.
“You’ve seen him shoot the puck all year long. We’re always trying to tee him up in a good spot,” McDavid said. “Whether the ice is good or bad, he’s going to find a way to blast one home.”
“It was Bouch’s time to take what was given,” Knoblauch said. “They were giving him the one-timer shot.”
The Oilers improved to 8-for-15 on the power play in the series and have now scored on 24 of 50 opportunities on the man advantage over the last three playoff matchups with the Kings.
From there, the Oilers locked it down.
The penalty kill held the Kings to one shot on their only chance in the third period. That kept the Oilers’ perfect record intact through 11 short-handed opportunities.
That latter part of the special team equation was just another example of how the Oilers excelled defensively on Sunday.
The Oilers kept the Kings at bay.
“We go into the third period with a 1-0 lead and the sign of a mature team is just to hold onto it,” Hyman said.
“Us on the back end, that’s how we want to play the game,” Ekholm said. “Having in our portfolio that we can play a lot of different games is going to be huge.
“We showed it that these games, we’re not afraid of them.”
Wednesday’s Game 5 now becomes the next huge game.
Win it and they could get perhaps as much as a week off before having to face Vancouver or Nashville. They hadn’t earned that kind of rest after the first round the last two years because they required seven and six games, respectively, to beat the Kings.
That could be a massive benefit to the league’s oldest team.
They have a staunch defensive effort from the likes of their goaltender and some of their least-heralded players to thank for putting them in that position.
“It’s going to be a big game on Wednesday. Having the opportunity to win it at home is going to be huge for us,” Bouchard said. “But to have a 1-0 win is even bigger for us, knowing that we can win those games that are tight.”
This wasn’t the McDavid show, even if he became the eighth player in NHL history to record at least 10 points in five different series with his second-period assist. This wasn’t about Draisaitl or any of the other flashy stars, either.
One goal and 13 shots doesn’t look pretty from an offensive perspective. But they won. That didn’t happen the other two times they mustered 13 shots, twice in the late 1990s against Dallas. Nor did it happen when they had 19 shots in Game 1 against San Jose in 2017 — the first playoff game for their current leadership core of McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins and Nurse.
The victory on Sunday is what matters. That’s the best sign this team is a legitimate threat to win it all by the end of June.
“It’s the playoffs,” Perry said. “These are the types of games you have to win in the playoffs.
“You’re going to have to dig deep and play defence and grind one out. We found a way.”
(Photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
