Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and the Edmonton Oilers went into Friday’s Game 5 of the NHL Western Conference Finals determined to score if they got a power-play chance and did it twice in a 3-1 win over the top-seeded Dallas Stars to take a 3-2 series lead and get within one victory of going to the Stanley Cup Finals.
“We’ve been pushing and they obviously don’t take a lot of penalties. You don’t have three, four or five opportunities a game to find your rhythm,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “So going into tonight, we wanted to make sure that if we only got one, we were going to make it count.”
There had not been a power-play goal by either team in this series until Nugent-Hopkins scored on a rebound only 18 seconds after a penalty in the first period, only their seventh chance against Dallas. That was 2 seconds longer than it took for him to score with a man advantage again after a penalty just a minute into the second period.
Photo: AFP
“If you’re going to draw up a road game, that’s much what you want to do,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “Come out, get two power-play goals early in the game, get the lead and then defend well all night.”
Stuart Skinner stopped 19 shots for the Oilers, while Philip Broberg scored from just inside the blue line. Evan Bouchard assisted on both of the power-play goals, while captain Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a helper on one of them.
“I thought right from start to finish we were dialed in,” McDavid said.
Photo: Chris Jones-USA Today
With a win at home today, the Oilers would advance to their first Stanley Cup Finals since 2006. They were 5-12-1 in November last year.
The Stars jumped ahead 2-0 in the first 5 minutes, 29 seconds of Game 4 in Edmonton and looked as though they were ready to take a stranglehold on the series. Instead, they did not have another goal for nearly 109 minutes stretched over six periods for their longest scoring drought of the post-season.
“We’ve been a bit disjointed offensively this whole series,” Stars center Matt Duchene said. “So hopefully we can find it here next game.”
If not, their season will end in Game 6 of the West Finals for the second year in a row.
Edmonton scored eight consecutive goals, getting even by the end of the first period on Wednesday, part of five unanswered goals in a 5-2 victory before going ahead 3-0 on Friday. The Stars, now 4-6 at home this post-season, finally got another puck in the net when Wyatt Johnston scored with 5 minutes, 51 seconds left.
Jake Oettinger had 23 saves for the Stars.
Dallas had only six shots on goal halfway through the game, but Skinner already had some quality stops by then — and more after that, including on the Stars’ only power play late in the second period.
“Stu was just solid. He was square, he was quick,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “We win 3-1 tonight and I think that’s a little skewed. I don’t think we were that much better tonight. I think just the fact that Stu had so many big saves gave us a little bit of a cushion and made it look easier than it was for our team.”
By the time Cameron Menzies finally left the arena on Monday, the blood gushing from the gash on his right hand had trickled down his wrist, part of his forearm and — somehow — up to his face. Smeared in crimson and regret, and already mouthing sheepish apologies to the crowd, he disappeared down the steps, pursued by a stern-looking Matt Porter, the chief executive of Professional Darts Corp (PDC). The physical scars from Menzies’ encounter with the Alexandra Palace drinks table after his 3-2 defeat against Charlie Manby at the Darts World Championship would be gone within a few weeks.
Manchester United on Monday blew the lead three times to miss out on moving up to fifth in the Premier League as AFC Bournemouth would not be beaten in a thrilling 4-4 draw at Old Trafford. United have lost just once in their past 10 games, but Ruben Amorim would be frustrated as more points at home were frittered away despite arguably the best attacking display of his reign in charge. Amad Diallo and Casemiro gave the hosts a halftime lead either side of Antoine Semenyo’s equalizer. Two Bournemouth goals from Evanilson and Marcus Tavernier in seven minutes at the start of the
LOW-GOAL SHOOT-OUT: Of the nine penalties in the shoot-out, only three went in, with Flamengo’s Samuel Lino, and Vitinha and Nuno Mendes of PSG netting Matvei Safonov on Wednesday made four straight penalty saves in a penalty shoot-out to help Paris Saint-Germain beat Flamengo in the Intercontinental Cup final and win a sixth trophy of the year. The Russian goalkeeper was thrown in the air by his teammates after his exploits in the shoot-out, which was won 2-1 by PSG after a 1-1 draw after extra-time. It completed a trophy-laden 12 months for the French team, who had already won the Trophee des Champions, Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup — also on penalties against Tottenham Hotspur in
Italian Luca de Aliprandini described Saturday’s World Cup giant slalom at Val d’Isere as the hardest race of his life, coming two days after his Swiss partner Michelle Gisin suffered a heavy fall in training which required neck surgery. De Aliprandini finished 26th in the men’s event won by Loic Meillard, but the result paled into insignificance with two-time Olympic ski champion Gisin in hospital with injuries to her wrist, knee and cervical spine (neck). “It was Michelle’s wish that I race here. I couldn’t say no to her, but it was the toughest race of my entire life,” an emotional De
RSS