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Good morning to everyone except front offices that say “as per team policy, terms were not disclosed” when they make transactions.
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It’s game night, let’s get into it.
While You Were Sleeping
… you didn’t miss any hockey. The weekend delivered our first three-day break of the Stanley Cup Final. We’ll get another before Game 4, and again before Games 6 and 7 (if necessary). Weirdly, the only two-day break left on the schedule is between Games 4 and 5, which have travel in between. Edmonton is close to Sunrise, right?
The good news is that the extra night off gave everyone one more day to get rested and healthy for a crucial Game 3 …
Game 3 goes tonight
The series shifts to Florida, tied 1-1 after the Panthers’ Friday night win. We’ve got a lot of moving parts here. In fact, let’s break out the bullet points:
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We’re not sure if Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will play tonight. He missed practice yesterday, a bit of a surprise given he never left Game 2, and coach Kris Knoblauch called him a game-time decision. It sounds like he’s more likely to suit up than not, but obviously any sort of significant injury to the former 100-point forward could be big.
The Oilers already sound like they’re tired of the Panthers “accidentally” falling onto their goalie. Mattias Ekholm says “enough’s enough,” but he’s not a referee, so his opinion won’t matter much. Lobbying the officials between games is part of the playoffs, and the Oilers certainly have a case here. Let’s see if it earns them a call in the blue paint at some point the rest of the way.
Notably absent from the scoresheet so far in this series: Sasha Barkov and Sam Reinhart, both of whom have been pointless. Wait, that sounded harsh — I meant that they haven’t scored any points, not that they’ve been … you know what, you get it.
As Daniel Nugent-Bowman points out, the ice has been tilted in the Panthers’ favor in the two second periods we’ve seen so far. That could be a fluke, or it could be a lack of focus from the Oilers. (It could also be the long change, although that hasn’t been an issue in overtime.)
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Game 3 is tonight at 8 p.m. ET on TNT, truTV, Max and Sportsnet.
Has this been the best 2-game start of the era?
I think it has been. If we’re just going based on the first two games of every Stanley Cup Final…