The Edmonton Oilers have not lost faith despite trailing the Florida Panthers 3-0 after a 4-3 loss last night.
You can understand the Oilers’ mindset, as they are a team that fired off 16 and eight-game winning streaks this season. Despite a 3-0 hole feeling nearly insurmountable in the playoffs, Stuart Skinner believes his group is capable of doing so.
“I’m not too sure what the stats are on coming back [from down 3-0], but if anyone can do it, it’s the Oil,” Skinner said.
The Oilers lost both regular season matchups against the Panthers, and have been outscored 11-4 through the first three games of the Stanley Cup Final. Despite things appearing somewhat lopsided, head coach Kris Knoblauch isn’t waving the white flag just yet.
“I think there’s a lot of belief,” Knoblauch said in his group. “You look at our season this year, we’ve had two eight-game winning streaks, we’ve had a 16-game winning streak. When things go well, we can really turn it up. I think we’ve shown that we can beat this team. I think there’s a lot of belief in that.”
Some will debate that, as the Oilers have held just one lead in this series. That said, they haven’t played as poorly as the results show. They were able to outshoot the Panthers by a wide margin as they did in Game 1, but have run into a hot goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky.
Oilers fans searching for any sort of optimism may be able to find some from the third period last night. They were able to beat Bobrovsky twice on goals from Philip Broberg and Ryan McLeod, and may be able to build some momentum off that heading into Game 4.
“I think at the end of the game in the third period we were just slinging pucks at the net,” said Darnell Nurse. “We’ve got to get traffic and bodies there, get the puck there and just compete.”
Things are looking bleak right now, but as Connor McDavid put it last night, it isn’t over until it’s over. The Oilers will be looking to take things one game at a time from here on out and will look to begin a potential comeback in Game 4 tomorrow night.
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