Experts expect close, intense Game 4 of Stanley Cup Final after Oilers’ Game 3 meltdown

The Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers had 140 penalty minutes in Monday night's Stanley Cup Final game. Nicole Weisberg reports on the "penalty chaos."

You know that messy, penalty-filled and seemingly unhinged third period of Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night?

The one in which several Edmonton Oilers players fought their Florida Panthers rivals in a good, old-fashioned line brawl, took a bazillion penalties which saw a bunch of them ejected from the eventual 6-1 Panthers win to put them up two games to one?

It’s a good thing, Oilers fans.

The whole thing bodes well for the team and for hopes of a close, intense battle in Thursday’s Game 4, say a former Oiler and a sports psychologist.

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“If you lose a game, it’s better to lose 6-1 than a close one, because the way that (the Oilers) lost, they’re going to be so upset about it that they’re going to respond much stronger than (if it was) a close game,” Georges Laraque – who played seven seasons for them, including the 2005-06 campaign that saw the Oilers make a run to Game 7 of the Cup final, and who endures as a fan favourite – told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday.

Personable ‘Big Georges,’ now a radio show host in Montreal who often returns to Edmonton, said he expects Game 4 to be close and that the Oilers will play much more disciplined than in the penalty-filled Game 3, in which the Oilers took 85 minutes in boo-boos and gave the Panthers 11 power plays, three of which led to Florida goals.

What Laraque saw on Monday late in the game, when five Oilers received misconducts and were ejected from the rest of the game, was a team collectively preparing mentally for the next one.

“If it’s a close game ... you’re not going to see that because it’s a one-goal game, but often in the playoffs, if a game is getting out of hand like it was (Monday), then at the end of the game, things will always happen,” he said.

“It’s just to show that, ‘You know what? We care, and we’re going to come back strong.’”

• Oilers confident they can bounce back from Stanley Cup Game 3 rout

Ben Sereda, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation at the University of Alberta in the area of sport and performance psychology, said Tuesday the way in which the Oilers lost, featuring a lopsided score and several penalties, can be used to their advantage, “whether that’s anger, whether that’s frustration, that extra little drive, that extra little bit of fuel that can be used to sharpen focus, to be more disciplined, but also give your body that extra little step.”

“I really saw ... (a) deep investment that was reflected,” Sereda told CTV News Edmonton. “They are experiencing such a high level of emotion because they care so much.”

He said one of the keys to Game 4 for Edmonton is that they have a significant amount of experience coming back from adversity in the playoffs.

This year, the Oilers overcame a two-games-to-none deficit to beat the Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the post-season. Last year, they faced elimination by the Vancouver Canucks but won the final two games of their best-of-seven second-round series to take it. And, also last year, they tried to pull off the near-impossible – come back from being down three games to none in the Stanley Cup Final against these same Panthers – and ended up short, losing 2-1 in the seventh and final game.

“They’ve been through, even in this series, really tough losses,” Sereda said. “With that in mind, and thinking back to the past few rounds, to past years, they’ve been able to bounce back. They’ve proven to themselves that they can effectively do it ...

“Drawing on that experience and hopefully having a little bit more distance from (Monday’s) game will hopefully allow them to prepare more objectively and effectively.”

Laraque said “it’s crucial” the Oilers win Game 4 in Sunrise, Fla., and expects they will.

“They’re going to be disciplined, and they’ll do everything to come back with the win,” he said. “(For) Game 4, knowing how important that it is, I think the Oilers will raise their level of play, and they have a really good road record in the playoffs this year.

“They know what they have to do.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg