Somewhere, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and his NBA counterpart, Adam Silver, are smiling.
Each faced the unhappy prospect of his league’s championship series ending in a four-game sweep, which would have been bad news for the network that carries them (ESPN) and for building fan interest. The longer the Stanley Cup Final or NBA Finals last, the more opportunities arise for the TV broadcaster and the leagues to increase their revenues, and the bigger audiences become as the suspense continues. (And yes, one league calls its showcase the Final, and the other calls it the Finals).
Bettman and the NHL got their reprieve on Saturday, when the Oilers’ superstars played like superstars in an 8-1 trouncing of the Panthers in Edmonton.
Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who had given up merely four goals on the 86 shots he had faced in the first three games, allowed five goals on 16 shots Saturday before he was mercifully yanked in favor of Anthony Stolarz. Bobrovsky, who had played every minute of the Panthers’ march to the Final, got little help on Saturday and there was no point in keeping him in there once Edmonton built a 5-1 lead. He got an extra chance to rest up for the trip back to Sunrise, Fla., for Game 5 on Tuesday. “We gave up eight goals, and zero of them were the goalie’s fault,” Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk told the team’s website.
The Oilers were especially effective off the rush as Connor McDavid scored his first career Cup Final goal and recorded three assists, giving him a single postseason-record 32 assists, breaking the mark Wayne Gretzky set in 1987-88. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, former Duck center Adam Henrique, defenseman Darnell Nurse, winger Dylan Holloway (two), and center Mattias Janmark also scored their first goal of the Final as the Oilers produced twice as many goals as they’d scored in the first three games combined.
Have the floodgates opened for the Oilers, or was this just one last show for the home fans? Those gates will have to stay wide open for Edmonton to extend the Final. Only one team, the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs against the Detroit Red Wings, has overcome an opponent’s 3-0 lead in the Cup Final. The Panthers are still in control, but they can’t get caught up in matching rushes against the speedy, skillful Oilers.
“As for our confidence, it’s nice to see them going in, for sure,” Nugent-Hopkins, who scored the Oilers’ sixth goal, said in a blog for nhl.com. “It’s nice to see the belief pay off. I think all year is just about sticking to it, and we feel like we have enough skill to to put pucks in, and tonight it paid off for us.
“And obviously, we’re going to have to reset and it’s not going to necessarily be the same come Tuesday.”
Forward Zach Hyman took a similarly calm approach. “It’s just one win. We lived to play another day,” he said in an interview with the NHL Network.
He said the Oilers “got good looks” on Bobrovsky, “and we were able to beat him. Got to do it again.” Hyman also said the Oilers, who stumbled early this season before Kris Knoblauch replaced Jay Woodcroft as coach, aren’t fazed by adversity.
“I think we’re playing free right now. We have nothing to lose anymore,” he said. “We’re just going out there and playing.”
As Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said to the team’s website, this wasn’t the Panthers’ first playoff loss. But they had won six straight, going back to the East finals against the New York Rangers. “We’ve got to figure out now what we can do better and what we did well,” he said.
The “what they did well” part won’t take much time to analyze. There wasn’t much.
“At the end of the day, it’s back to the drawing board. If we win, we learn from it and we put it aside. If we lose, we do the same thing,” Tkachuk said.
Silver and the NBA had gotten their reprieve on Friday, when the Dallas Mavericks routed the Boston Celtics 122-84. Dallas was dominant early and never let up, fueled by strong efforts from Luka Doncic (29 points, five rebounds, five assists, three steals) and Kyrie Irving (21 points, four rebounds, six assists) in shredding the Celtics’ previously staunch defense. The Mavericks’ bench also made some strong contributions. If this was their last gasp, at least they showed some pushback against the NBA’s best team.
The Celtics will have another chance on Monday to win their 18th NBA title—and break their tie with the Lakers for most championships—when the Final shifts back to Boston for Game 5. The Celtics are 8-2 at home in postseason play. Unlike the NHL, no NBA team has ever erased an 0-3 deficit in the Finals.
The Celtics’ name came up in another context last week, following the sad announcement Wednesday that Hall of Famer Jerry West had died at 86.
West won a single championship as a player in nine NBA Final appearances—on six of those occasions, he lost to the great Celtics teams led by Bill Russell.
West did win eight championships as a team executive, and he had almost as many nicknames as he had championship rings. He was “Zeke from Cabin Creek,” a reference to his rural upbringing in Chelyan, West Virginia, and he never completely lost the twang or the hardscrabble sensibility of his early years, even though he played for, coached, and later molded the Lakers into the glamorous and dazzling “Showtime” era teams.
He hated formality: when I called him one day in 2016 to interview him for a column, I addressed him as Mr. West. He gently scolded me, though I could never have addressed him as simply Jerry.
He also was “Mr. Clutch,” for his uncanny ability to perform under pressure. And, of course, he was “The Logo,” the inspiration for the silhouetted player on the NBA’s logo. A Hall of Famer, he spanned generations and never lost his eye for talent or his love of a game that sometimes tortured him to the point where he’d walk around the arena or leave the building entirely and drive aimlessly on the nearest freeway because he couldn’t bear to watch games.
Wednesday was an especially sad day for sports fans because Mike Downey, who brought humor and perspective to his work for the L.A. Times, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, died of a heart attack at 72 at his home in Rancho Mirage.
Downey wrote smoothly and with great insight, no matter the topic. He skewered the pompous by making clever plays on words, never with meanness. Be prepared to laugh a lot when you read this 1987 column on the America’s Cup yacht race (I loved “the left-wing bobby hull having cracked). He also wrote an insightful review of West’s autobiography for the Times in 2011.
The world is a dimmer place without Jerry West and Mike Downey.
The conspiracy theorist might say that both teams tanked so they could win it all at home for their fans. I mean, it IS interesting that the Celtics and Panthers, who have dominated their respective series’, had such poor showings in game 4.
I’m sorry to hear about Mike Downey. I sure enjoyed reading his work. Condolences to his family and friends-like you.