At the start of overtime, your mid-drowse blogger took a look at the scoresheet for Oilers–Golden Knights, then looked again, on a different site, because he thought the first one must have been glitching or something. Four Edmonton goals, and none involved Leon Draisaitl or Connor McDavid? Not even a single measly assist? That can't be right. But it was true: For 75 minutes, including that ensuing overtime, Vegas clamped down on the Oilers' superlative-scoring duo, keeping them off the board and mostly away from any serious threats. They needed to do it for 76.
There was a lot to like about the game the Knights played, which makes Thursday's 5-4 result that much more painful. They made life miserable for Calvin Pickard, scoring four goals for the first time since Game 4 of the Wild series. They capitalized on two of their five power plays, Victor Olofsson scoring both times. Their kill was flawless, especially on a five-minute man-disadvantage in overtime. Their top skaters were buzzing, Jack Eichel contributing three assists and Mark Stone two apples of his own. They even mounted a stirring comeback, clawing back from 3-1 and then 4-2 in the third to send it to an extra frame.
And through it all, they silenced Draisaitl and McDavid, each near the top of the playoff scoring leaderboard. Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy kept rolling his bench, matching up the Oilers' big threats with roughly equal doses of Eichel/Stone and Bill Karlsson/Reilly Smith, attempting and usually succeeding in smothering the Oil Boys with a two-way line with fresh legs. It got so frustrating that Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch briefly split up his stars to try to escape the matchups. No dice.
After the game, one reporter made the mistake of praising Cassidy for his team's effort in shutting down Draisaitl and McDavid. "Are you trying to rub it in?" Cassidy asked.
Because for all their good work for 75 minutes (and soon after a pretty brutal missed penalty that should have had Vegas on the power play), the Golden Knights let their guard down for the briefest of stretches, and it killed them. Evan Bouchard took the puck away from Stone in his own zone and sent it around to Corey Perry, who dropped it off for a streaking McDavid. Here was something McDavid hadn't had much of on the evening: momentum. The fastest man in the NHL (by vibe if not necessarily by MPH) used the little bit of space he had to absolutely discombobulate Jack Eichel, the man picked right behind him in 2015. From there, an easy one-timer to Draisaitl for the win and the 2-0 series lead.
"It's tough to even celebrate my part of the goaI," Draisaitl said, and he was, somewhat like Eichel, mostly just along for the ride. It was not, as it developed, an obviously juicy opportunity—a pretty standard 2-on-2 zone entry, with the Knights well-positioned. But McDavid's speed caught Eichel flat-footed, and walked him like one of those shivering stick-bug chihuahuas. He shouldn't feel bad; McDavid's done it to just about everyone, sometimes several at a time. "When you have elite talent, those game-breakers, they just need a moment," Knoblauch said, and that's all McDavid was afforded, after most of four periods of white-on-rice defense, but that moment and that seemingly innocuous volume of space were enough. The home crowd audio, here, is a beautiful indicator of how quickly things can go south.
McDavid to Draisaitl. Draisaitl to McDavid. It's music to the ears of anyone they're not skating toward, and it's a duo the likes of which NHL history can't boast many to match. They've assisted on each other's game-winning goal 110 times now (only the Sedin twins have more), seven of those in the postseason. That's the thing about a game-winner: it can have nothing to do with the game that preceded it. It can happen out of nowhere, be manufactured out of nothing. As the series heads to Edmonton, the Knights are kicking themselves over one failed backcheck, and the Oilers confident in the knowledge that they have a pair of guys who don't need much of an opening to eventually barge through.
