Connor McDavid went straight to the point in summing up Stuart Skinner’s performance in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final. “Great again,” the star captain of the Edmonton Oilers said after his team’s 4-3 overtime win over the Florida Panthers to win the series-opening game. Call it nine games of greatness now, ever since Skinner returned to the net after Calvin Pickard was lost to injury two games into the Oilers’ second-round playoff series with the Vegas Golden Knights. Pickard had replaced Skinner in the Oilers’ net after the team’s first two games of the playoffs, both high-scoring losses to the Los Angeles Kings. “(Skinner) gave us a chance to win,” McDavid told reporters of the starting goalie’s performance Wednesday night before a loud Rogers Place crowd. “That’s all you ask of your goalie. He made some big saves there in the second and in overtime.” They were big, all right. On the biggest stage of the hockey world. Against the same team Edmonton played in last year’s Stanley Cup final and lost to by a goal in the seventh and deciding game. While the Panthers took the lead on a first-period power play gifted to them courtesy a failed coach’s challenge by Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch on their previous goal – then went up 3-1 two minutes into the second on a clear, point-blank look by forward Sam Bennett on his team’s eight shot of the game – Skinner held down the fort the rest of the way. The 26-year-old said in the Oilers’ dressing room after the game he simply thought of his performance as his job, which is – and you’ve heard it before – “to give my team a chance to win.” “That’s what I’ve got to do,” Skinner said. “It doesn’t really matter how the last period goes, or how the last goal goes in, or the last great save I made, it’s all about kind of what you do from there.” He withheld a barrage of Panthers shots the rest of the second period, turning aside 16 more to help allow the Oilers to claw their way back into the game. “I knew that they were going to have a push, especially in the second period, because you knew that we out shot them pretty good in the first,” Skinner said in the Oilers’ dressing room. And with Edmonton coming on in the third period, turning the tables on Florida with a dominant 20 minutes to outshoot them 14-2 and tie the game with six minutes left in it, it set up one last-ditch effort by the Panthers when extra time began. Florida poured on the shots, getting two on net and missing four – including a good chance by Sam Reinhart in close – inside the first minute spent almost entirely in Edmonton’s end. But the Panthers’ grip on extra time evaporated a couple of minutes later and the Oilers came to life. Halfway through overtime, Edmonton grabbed the momentum, and although Florida managed four more shots, the Oilers won the quality chances battle, with Leon Draisaitl scoring the winner on the power play with 31 seconds left. “The way that we were able to finish it in a timely manner is massive,” Skinner said. “You saw that in our faces when we celebrated.”
