Written by Marc Spector at SportsNet.ca
Wait… What?
This wasn’t supposed to be a coronation?
The question wasn’t “Would the Edmonton Oilers win?” It was, “How many games would it take the San Jose Sharks to lose?”
Welcome to playoff hockey, Edmonton. You wait 11 years for it, and in a quick three hours it breaks your heart.
“They had the puck all night,” said Connor McDavid, in a matter-of-fact assessment of his team’s 3-2 overtime loss in Game 1 of Edmonton’s Round 1 series with San Jose. “When you don’t have the puck you’re not going to get many shots on goal. They did a good job.”
Does a 44-19 shots advantage for the road team in Game 1 constitute “a good job?” You bet it does.
Sometimes shots on goal is a deceiving stat. But when the period totals are 10-10 in the first, 10-4 in the second, 18-3 in the third and 6-2 in OT — the latter three in favour of the Sharks — the shot clock tells you which team dominated in the first playoff game played in Edmonton since the 2006 Stanley Cup Final.
Edmonton led 2-0 after 20 minutes on a fluky carom and a powerplay goal, then watched the Sharks absolutely take the game away from them (with some help from six Oilers minor penalties). Eventually, Melker Karlsson would take a wide pass from Joe Pavelski and rip a wrist shot far side on Cam Talbot, settling this one at the 3:22 mark of the first overtime.
The better team on the night won Game 1. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.
“They were able to grab the game and we were unable to grab it back,” said Todd McLellan, the Oilers coach who might have had an edge against the team he coached for seven seasons, had his charges been able to deliver on that edge against an experienced Sharks team that lost the Cup Final to Pittsburgh a year ago.
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