Just 66 seconds into Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, Leon Draisaitl scored to give the Edmonton Oilers a 1-0 lead over the Florida Panthers. Over an hour of game time later, Drasaitl scored the overtime winner to seal a 4-3 win and send the Edmonton fans home happy.
Draisaitl got the game started with the fastest goal to start a Stanley Cup Final since 1976. He cleaned up a rebound off the pad of Sergei Bobrovsky and blew the roof off Rogers Place. That was a little foreshadowing because Draisaitl and Connor McDavid would make their impacts felt throughout the game.
After Draisaitl's first goal, the defending champion Panthers responded by scoring three straight to take a 3-1 lead just two minutes into the second period with noted pest Sam Bennett registering two of them.
But the Oilers never wavered, and they chipped away at the lead and eventually tied the game when McDavid found Mattias Ekholm with a gorgeous dish into the high slot.
On the game-winner, that dynamic duo teamed up on the power play in overtime. The Panthers penalty killers got a little too high in the zone, and that created a 2-on-1 down low for McDavid and Draisaitl. McDavid slipped a pass across to Draisaitl, who blasted a one-timer past Bobrovsky to win the game.
Prior to Wednesday night, the Panthers were 31-0 when leading at the end of the first or second period in playoff games under Paul Maurice. All it took was two of the best players in the world to end that streak.
Florida has to feel like it let a golden opportunity slip through its fingers in this one. Bennett continued his red-hot postseason with two more goals, and Bobrovsky made some big saves, but the Panthers didn't get enough contributions from the rest of the lineup.
Teams that win Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final have gone on to win the Cup 76.5% of the time in NHL history, so the Oilers have a leg up in that department. The Panthers will try to reverse that trend, starting with a Game 2 win on Friday night.
Dynamic duo delivers
At this point, it's probably easy to take the brilliance of Draisaitl and McDavid for granted. Those two do something spectacular almost every night, but they have taken their game to another level in these playoffs.
Draisaitl is one of the greatest goal-scorers of his generation, and his nose for the net was evident in Game 1. From the way he anticipated that rebound on his first goal to his precision accuracy on one knee in overtime, Draisaitl has a knack for scoring that few players can match. It's only more impressive that he keeps that scoring touch at a time of year when it gets much harder to light the lamp.
As for McDavid, his two beautiful assists will make all the highlight reels, and rightfully so. That was his 32nd career playoff game with at least two assists, tying him with Sidney Crosby, Doug Gilmour and Ray Bourque. That's pretty good company!
However, his defensive game shouldn't get overlooked either. In the first period, he ran down Sam Bennett on the backcheck to prevent at least a partial breakaway.
Later, McDavid almost single-handedly thwarted a Panthers penalty kill. His defensive improvements are a big reason why Edmonton is back here for a second year in a row.
Ugly night for Ekblad, Forsling
No Panthers defensive pairing got more ice time at five-on-five than Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling, and those minutes did not go particularly well. Those two have been very good throughout the playoffs for the Panthers, but they got torched in Game 1.
The night got off to an ominous start when Ekblad and Forsling got swarmed right off the opening face-off on Draisaitl's first goal. They let the Oilers get multiple whacks at rebounds in the low slot, and Draisaitl was left all alone on the backdoor. Their night didn't get much better from there.
With Ekblad and Forsling on the ice at five-on-five, the Panthers posted a miserable 21.3% expected goals share, per Natural Stat Trick. They also owned a minus-2 goal differential. Perhaps the most troubling part about this outing for Ekblad and Forsling was that they weren't the primary defenders on McDavid and Draisaitl. That duty fell to Seth Jones and Niko Mikkola.
It's certainly possible, if not likely, that Ekblad and Forsling bounce back in Game 2. Still, this is something worth monitoring as the series wears on.
Skinner shakes off slow start
This game was a microcosm of Stuart Skinner's entire postseason to this point. He got off to a slow start but pulled himself together to come up with some heroic saves in the last couple periods to keep the Oilers in it.
Two minutes into the second period, Skinner surrendered a goal to Bennett, which gave the Panthers a 3-1 lead. None of the three goals were terrible. They were all the result of mistakes in front of Skinner, but goalies have to make big saves on tough shots if their team is going to win the Stanley Cup.
It looked like Skinner was well on the way to his first pedestrian outing in a few weeks, but he recovered extremely well. After allowing that third goal, Skinner was dialed in and turned in some timely saves. Perhaps the most impressive was his save on Evan Rodrigues in overtime, when he turned away a point-blank attempt with Aleksander Barkov right in his grill.
According to Natural Stat Trick, Skinner came out roughly even in terms of goals saved above average, but that doesn't tell the full story. Skinner could have collapsed after a rough start, but he rose to the challenge and backstopped Edmonton to a comeback win.
