Thanks to Leon Draisaitl, the Edmonton Oilers will return home to Rogers Place for Game 5 with the Stanley Cup Final tied 2-2.
Draisaitl helped the Edmonton Oilers complete a stunning comeback against the Florida Panthers and achieve a Stanley Cup Final first after scoring 11:18 in overtime to give Edmonton a 5-4 victory.
Draisaitl, after jumping off the bench for a rush, took a pass from teammate Vasily Podkolzin and pitchforked the puck with one arm past goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. He did so despite Panthers forward AJ Greer draped all over him.
“Good play but Podzie there, to get that into the middle,” Draisaitl said post-game to TNT’s Darren Pang. “Obviously, it was a fortunate bounce but we’ll take these right now.”
The goal marked Draisaitl’s fourth overtime goal in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs — a new NHL record in a single playoff — and his second in the Stanley Cup Final this year (he also scored the OT winner in Game 1). Only two other players have scored multiple OTGWGs in a single Stanley Cup series: Don Raleigh (Rangers, 1950) and John Leclaire (Canadiens, 1993).
“Yeah, it’s good,” Draisaitl said of the history he accomplished. “But I mean obviously we have a lot of work ahead of us. I’ll take it, but yeah, bigger picture.”
Drasaitl’s winner also made the Florida Panthers the first team ever to lose a Stanley Cup Final game after leading by at least 3 goals after the first period.
The Panthers got out to a quick lead thanks to Matthew Tkachuk scoring consecutive power-play goals 5:16 apart. With 42 seconds remaining in the first period, Anton Lundell sent a wrist shot past Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner to make it 3-0 headed into the break.
When the two teams returned to the ice in the second, the Oilers had a new goaltender on the ice, Calvin Pickard, to try and jumpstart the team. And jumpstart them he did.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored on an Oilers’ power play 3:33 into the period. Darnell Nurse and Podkolzin added tallies of their own to tie the game 3-3 headed into the second intermission.
After a back-and-forth third period, the Oilers’ Jake Walman scored what appeared to be the game-winner with 6:24 remaining in regulation, blasting a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky short side.
But with 20 seconds remaining and Bobrovsky pulled for an extra attacker, Sam Reinhart found paydirt near at the side of the net, sending the Amerant Bank Arena crowd, which included music sensation Taylor Swift, into a huge celebration.
Draisaitl’s heroics in overtime would then come shortly after Pickard made a huge glove save on Sam Bennett. Pickard reached out with his catching mitt just enough to redirect Bennett’s one-timer off the crossbar and out.
Pickard made 22 saves in relief, including four in overtime, to become only the sixth goaltender in NHL history to win a Stanley Cup Final game in relief. The Moncton, NB goaltender is a perfect 7-0 this postseason.
“Once we find our legs and once we find our game, we know how good we can be and we continue to push through whatever adversity is coming,” Draisaitl said of the Oilers being such a great comeback team. “Once we get over that hump to the other side we know our best game is hard to play against, obviously we’d like to start that way a little sooner.”
