The Edmonton Oilers avoided elimination for a third time on Friday and tied the game with a 5-1 victory in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final series against the Florida Panthers .
The 18,347 spectators present at Rogers Place were noisy from the first minutes of the warm-up until the end of the match, while their favorites gave them little reason to be silent.
The Oilers therefore force a seventh game to be held. They will try to become only the second team to win the Stanley Cup after falling behind 0-3 in the Final.
Only the Toronto Maple Leafs achieved the feat, in 1942, against the Detroit Red Wings.
Leon Draisaitl, who had mentioned in the morning that he was dissatisfied with his game since the start of the final, was responsible for the first goal of the evening. The German made a feint, then served a perfect pass to Warren Foegele, who scored into an open net.
The Panthers only shot Stuart Skinner twice in the first period.
The Oilers doubled the lead at the start of the second period. There were only 46 seconds left on the clock when Adam Henrique completed a play from Mattias Janmark.
Aleksander Barkov silenced the crowd just 20 seconds later by beating Stuart Skinner, but the Oilers called for a video replay and were right. There was an offside situation when the Panthers entered the zone; the goal was therefore disallowed.
With a little less than two minutes remaining, Zach Hyman beat two Panthers defenders to stand alone in front of Sergei Bobrovsky, whom he beat with a backhand shot.
Edmonton scored twice on just four shots in the second period. The Panthers tested the Oilers goaltender 11 times.
In the third period, Barkov scored his eighth goal of the playoffs for the Panthers.
Ryan McLeod and Darnell Nurse scored empty-net goals to end the debate.
The decisive match of this final will be played on Monday in Sunrise, Florida.
More details to come.
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