ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and the Edmonton Oilers went into Game 5 of the Western Conference Final determined to score if they got a power-play chance.
They did twice, and quickly both times, in a 3-1 win over the top-seeded Dallas Stars to take a 3-2 series lead and get within one victory of going to the Stanley Cup Final.
“We’ve been pushing and they obviously don’t take a lot of penalties. You don’t have three, four or five opportunities a game to find your rhythm,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “So going into tonight, we wanted to make sure that if we only got one, we were going to make it count.”
There hadn’t been a power-play goal by either team in this series until Nugent-Hopkins scored on a rebound only 18 seconds after a penalty in the first period, only their seventh chance against Dallas. That was 2 seconds longer than it took for him to score with a man advantage again after a penalty just a minute into the second period.
“If you’re going to draw up a road game, that’s much what you want to do,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “Come out, get two power-play goals early in the game, get the lead and then defend well all night.”
Stuart Skinner stopped 19 shots for the Oilers, and Philip Broberg scored from just inside the blue line. Evan Bouchard assisted on both of the power-play goals, while captain Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a helper on one of them.
“I thought right from start to finish we were dialed in,” McDavid said. “Everything. Details, a lot of things.”
Game 6 is Sunday night in Edmonton. With a win at home, the Oilers would advance to their first Stanley Cup Final since 2006. They were 5-12-1 in November and had already made a coaching change
The Stars jumped ahead 2-0 in the first 5:29 of Game 4 at Edmonton, and looked as though they were ready to take a stranglehold on the series. Instead, they didn’t have another goal for nearly 109 minutes stretched over six periods for their longest scoring drought of the postseason.
“We’ve been a bit disjointed offensively this whole series,” Stars center Matt Duchene said. “So hopefully we can find it here next game.”
If not, their season will end in Game 6 of the West final for the second year in a row.
Edmonton scored eight consecutive goals, getting even by the end of the first period Wednesday night, part of five unanswered goals in a 5-2 victory before going ahead 3-0 on Friday. The Stars, now 4-6 at home this postseason,…