Pickard saves a game and maybe a season
Edmonton's backup goalie is 7-0, and the Oilers take a remarkable OT victory out of Florida.
Changing coaches is the first resort for NHL teams that struggle. Changing goaltenders is the first resort for coaches, when a game starts getting away. When Dallas was on the verge of elimination at the hands of Edmonton, Peter deBoer fired goalie Jake Oettinger after two shots, both of which were goals. Dallas lost and deBoer was fired. Sometimes your instincts can lead you all the way to oblivion.
The Oilers went from there to the Stanley Cup Final. In Thursday’s Game 4, they played another mindless first period, camped out in the penalty box, and trailed 3-0. At intermission, coach Kris Knoblauch said all the usual things, and with three-and-a-half minutes before resumption, he said goalie Stuart Skinner was out and backup Calvin Pickard was in. That would have come as a surprise to Pickard, if his whole career hadn’t been full of deflections and rebounds and pucks against a post.
Magically, the Oilers rediscovered themselves. Pickard made saves of ascending difficulty and importance. Edmonton got a power play goal and had the game tied 3-3 going into the third period. Jake Walman blasted a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky to get the lead, but with 17 seconds left Sam Reinhart tied it for the homestanding Panthers. That created overtime, for the third time in four games, and Sam Bennett, the best player in the Final, loomed in front of Pickard and let one go. Pickard swatted it with his glove, and the puck hit the crossbar and fell away.
Reprieved, the Oilers got the game-winner from Leon Draisaitl, who had been MVP runnerup to Connor Hellebuyck earlier Thursday. It came from a cross-ice pass from Vasily Podkolzin, as Corey Perry went to the net to occupy the Panthers. Draisaitl, now the first player ever with four OT goals in one playoff run, managed to score with only one hand on the stick. Maybe it was a symbol of what a drowning, desperate team can do. The Oilers won, 5-4, tied the series, 2-2, and will play two of the next three in the North Country. The locale hasn’t mattered much in either the NBA or NHL playoffs; these teams would be willing to take this argument into any street. What we do know is that this series has a chance to be remembered forever, even by folks who claim the Maple Leafs won a Cup, once upon a time.
Draisaitl benefited from the “long change.” In the first overtime, each team’s bench is on the offensive end. Players have to skate farther to play defense or to get off the ice so fresh defenders can come on. Florida did not change cleanly, and Draisaitl popped onto the ice as Podkolzin was bringing the puck into the offensive zone. But the long change might not have mattered without Knoblauch’s quick change.
The only goal Pickard surrendered was Reinhart’s. The analysts thought he was somewhat responsible for that, since his clearing pass was hard for defenseman Brett Kulak to handle, and the Panthers kept the puck in Edmonton’s zone. But it was a 5-on-6 situation, and Matthew Tkachuk was occupying Pickard’s eyes in front of the net while Reinhart was getting the puck on the side and scoring at an expert’s angle. The point is that such a goal could have shattered the Oilers, but Pickard stopped all four overtime shots and stopped 22 of 23 overall, including nine of 10 that were deemed “high danger” by NaturalStatTrick.com.
There was precedent for Pickard. The Oilers were pinatas in their first two playoff games, both losses at Los Angeles. Knoblauch installed Pickard and they won four straight. Pickard kept the net through two more wins against Las Vegas, but then was injured. He’s now 7-0, and three of those wins were in overtime. Goalie changes are usually designed to inspire the rest of the group, not to judge the exiled goalie, and Skinner wasn’t blameworthy in all three Florida goals. But playoff teams can’t function if they’re looking over their shoulders at their own goalie. There’s too much else to worry about.
Pickard is 33. He lost the element of surprise several traumas ago. Vegas took him in the expansion draft. Pickard spent much of that summer touring the city, with the other Golden Knights, and urging them to buy tickets for the first major league franchise in Vegas history. Fans even helped Pickard design his first Vegas helmet. Then the Knights claimed Malcolm Subban on waivers and got rid of Pickard before their first game. Toronto traded for him and sent him to its American Hockey League team, the Marlies. Pickard helped them to the league championship.
In 2017 Pickard was Canada’s starting goalie in the World Championship. The tournament is a bigger deal in Europe than here, primarily because its roster consists of players who didn’t make, or got eliminated from, the Stanley Cup playoffs. But, like anything else, it’s a pretty nice trophy if you win it. Pickard almost did, posting a .932 save percentage and getting Canada to the finals, where he made 40 saves but lost, 2-1, to a Swedish team that had Henrik Lundqvist in goal.
He turned some heads in Colorado when he had a .901 save percentage for one of the league’s worst teams. When he came to the Oilers he was ticketed for Bakersfield, their AHL team, because Edmonton had Skinner and had invested in Jack Campbell. But when Campbell couldn’t catch on, Pickard came up. According to the Hockey Abstract, Joseph has a quality-start percentage of 60.5. That’s the alltime best for an Oiler goalie.
Otherwise, the Oilers escaped a 3-1 hole by using everybody on the bus. Five defensemen played at least 22 minutes and Darnell Nurse played 30 — he also got the goal that cut it to 3-2, and made a foray around Bobrovsky’s goal and found Podkolzin to tie it.
Connor McDavid had a couple of startling moves but was held to one assist, that one to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who’s getting better by the game and scored the first goal on a power play. And when it came time to go ahead, Walman stood wide-open, holding his stick above his head like Scottie Scheffler getting ready to downswing, and when Kasperi Kapanen’s pass arrived, Walman beat Bobrovsky.
Walman came over from Detroit and has given Edmonton stability on the back line, as well as a feistiness that Florida was supposed to own. During the gong-show loss in Game 3, he took a water bottle and attempted to squirt the Panthers’ bench, and he stopped by to lecture the Panthers after the Oilers went ahead.
Walman’s mother’s uncle is Jake LaMotta, the Raging Bull himself. He says he was named after LaMotta, although he admits his parents say that he was not. LaMotta lost five of six fights to Ray Robinson, as well as several pints of blood, and he kept volunteering for more. There are no backups in boxing, alas, but there is a bell, like the Pavlovian sound that Kris Knoblauch heard when it was time to save the Oilers.
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