Quote:
Originally Posted by direwolf
The Oilers win games when they lure the other team into playing no-defence river hockey, constantly trading chances, etc... Florida unfortunately got sucked into that last night and it cost them. They also weren't prepared to match the Oilers' desperation and it showed. Closing a series out is never easy, even when you've completely dominated the other team up to that point.
I have no doubt that they'll get back to their usual suffocating defensive game on Tuesday and finally finish these clowns off. After having been here last year and not getting the job done, I don't think the Panthers are gonna let this one slip away.
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Chucky said in the PG that they stopped playing as a 5-man unit. You could see each one of them was out there trying to make hero plays. They (very understandably) were excited and nervous about that a win means the Cup. They were simply not in the right head space yesterday to close it out, and the game got away from them quickly. This happens to many, many teams and that's why we haven't seen a sweep in the SCF in almost 30 years.
Then, after a certain point, it didn't matter anymore. No real difference between 4-1 and 8-1 for what they have to do on Tuesday.
They'll burn the tape and re-watch what made them successful in games 1-3, and will reset their mentality. I don't think they're any more "scared" of the Oilers than they were before the series started, when they knew what they had to do to beat them and executed on that three games in a row. The Oilers didn't "figure anything out" -- the Panthers were almost entirely off their game.
They have three more chances to get it right.