Oilers drag Panthers back to Alberta with Game 5 win: Grades, takeaways, early look at Game 6
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Ryan S. Clark
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Kristen Shilton
With the Stanley Cup in the building for a second straight game, the Florida Panthers couldn’t quite muster enough in Game 5 to clinch, as the Edmonton Oilers skated away with a 5-3 victory.
The game started mildly enough, with a 1-0 Oilers lead after one frame. Things got wild in the second period, with five goals combined from the two teams. While the Panthers got within one in the third, they couldn’t get the equalizer, and Connor McDavid scored an empty-net goal to put the capper on the festivities.
It was a four-point night for McDavid, who continues his climb up the single-playoff points leaderboard. His 42 points in this playoff run are five shy of Wayne Gretzky (1985) for the most all time.
We’re here to break it all down for you. Here are our grades for both teams, along with takeaways that stuck out the most, key players to watch and the big questions left unanswered prior to Game 6 (8 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN+).
Panthers grade: B-
Florida checked in late to Game 5 and ran out of runway to seal the deal on the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship — again.
The Panthers gave up a shorthanded goal less than six minutes into the first period, and that appeared to deflate the team in a way where it didn’t recover until well into the second frame. By then, the Panthers were already trailing by multiple goals, a deficit too difficult to climb out of at the best of times — let alone when up against a desperate opponent.
Florida did find its legs eventually and looked dangerous for most of the third period, but while the Panthers’ depth skaters showed up, not enough of Florida’s stars — Sam Reinhart? Aleksander Barkov? Carter Verhaeghe? — did the same. Edmonton’s elite skaters performed as exactly that Tuesday. The Panthers’ best better be prepared to do the same in Game 6.
Oilers grade: B+
Scoring eight goals in Game 4 allowed the Oilers to extend the series. But that was no guarantee they could find cohesion in Game 5; as it turns out, they did.
Once again, the Oilers scored the first goal and built a three-goal lead. Their power play went from searching for answers to searching for more goals. They had moments when their ability to suppress shots was evident, which was the case when the Panthers failed to launch a shot over the final 14 minutes of the first period. Plus, they blocked 26 shots in support of Stuart Skinner.
They also had some challenging moments which saw them enter survival mode. In the second period, they allowed 16 shots and two goals, one of them coming less than 30 seconds after they had pushed the lead to 4-1. That second-period surge kept the Panthers within reach before Oliver Ekman-Larsson‘s goal just 4:04 into the third made life a bit challenging for the Oilers. In the final frame, Edmonton had only four shots while allowing 11. Nevertheless, they had just enough to pull this one out.
What we learned in Game 5
Florida’s special teams are a problem
The Panthers had done a masterful job early in the series of holding off Edmonton’s potent power play. But the Oilers have been turning the tide there, and Florida looks increasingly vulnerable in an area that was once a true strength. Edmonton opened the scoring in Game 5 with a nifty shorthanded goal by Connor Brown, and then scored two power-play goals.
Meanwhile, Florida never capitalized on its own chances, going 0-for-3 on the power play. Tightly contested series are rarely won at even strength; Florida must hold Edmonton at bay on special teams too if it expects to come away with a Cup.
Sergei Bobrovsky can’t win alone
Florida leaned into its exceptional goaltending throughout the postseason. But Bobrovsky was aided by what was once a stellar defensive commitment from the players in front of him.
That’s dwindled over the past two games, and Bobrovsky has looked more exposed as a result. Perhaps it’s the jitters associated with trying to close a team out and win a Cup, but Florida’s once-impenetrable appearance collapsing on the Oilers in the offensive zone wasn’t nearly as apparent in the first half of Game 5, and it cost the Panthers a win.
Florida has to get back to protecting the house and giving Bobrovsky a better chance to do his best work.
That Oilers power-play unit might be fine going forward
Remember that time when the Oilers’ power play struggled to find shots, let alone goals, and it led to questions about what was going wrong? A power-play goal in Game 4 was followed by two more with the extra skater advantage in Game 5.
McDavid made the point that the Oilers gradually find answers against opposing penalty kills — and he has a point. The Oilers went through similar struggles in the beginning of the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Stars, only to score four power-play goals combined in Games 5 and 6 to close out the series.
0:44
Zach Hyman doubles Oilers’ lead with tip off slap shot
Evan Bouchard fires, but the puck tips off Zach Hyman’s stick for the Oilers score in the second period.
We might need to have a conversation about Evan Bouchard
Bouchard’s three assists in Game 5 do more than add to his stellar 2024 postseason — they open up a larger discussion about where he fits within the landscape of the game’s top young defensemen.
It’s reached a point that having a young, puck-moving top-four option has almost become a necessity to win or at least be in a position to win in today’s NHL. Miro Heiskanen‘s 26 points in 27 playoff games in 2020 helped the Stars reach the Cup Final while bolstering Heiskanen’s reputation. The same went for Cale Makar in 2022 when he finished with 29 points in 20 playoff games and helped the Colorado Avalanche win the Stanley Cup.
Bouchard’s 32 points through 23 games now have him five points shy of tying Oilers assistant coach Paul Coffey’s record of most points by a defensemen in a single postseason. And for anyone who might not have been familiar with Bouchard, this postseason serves as a launching pad for him to be included in that top defenseman discussion.
Players to watch in Game 6
Matthew Tkachuk, LW, Panthers
It took until Game 5, but Tkachuk finally had his best game of the Cup Final on Tuesday. The Panthers’ top forward was a force at both ends of the ice, setting up teammates, scoring himself and drawing penalties. Tkachuk hadn’t had that sort of all-around impact yet against Edmonton, and it was much needed — especially if he can channel that energy again in Game 6.
It was little wonder that the stronger Tkachuk became, the better Florida performed down the stretch in Game 5. He should be ready and able to set the tone in Game 6, and his teammates will be prepared to follow that lead from puck drop.
Connor McDavid, C, Oilers
Choosing McDavid as the player to watch ahead of Game 6 is essentially the hockey equivalent of why florals in spring are groundbreaking. But at the same time, how could he not be the choice?
He went from not having one goal through the first three games of the Stanley Cup Final to having a goal and four points just in Game 4. He followed that up in Game 5 by scoring two goals and two assists. He is now the favorite to win the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP, according to ESPN BET.
While it’s the sort of production that comes with the mantle of being the best player in hockey, let’s take a breath and remember that McDavid is doing this during a Cup Final that has seen his team go from being swept to forcing a Game 6.
1:53
Connor McDavid plays hero for Oilers with 4-point performance
Connor McDavid leads the Oilers back to Edmonton with a two-goal, two-assist night in Game 5.
Big questions for Game 6
Can the Panthers put this series away?
It’s one thing to close out an opponent in the first or second round of a playoff series. It’s another thing entirely for Florida to close the book on Edmonton and claim the Cup.
The Panthers have allowed their opponent to dictate too much early on in the past two games, and it has put them in a position to play catch up. The Panthers have now failed to clinch at home or away, and Edmonton had every reason to believe it can complete the most improbably of comebacks in this series.
It’s time for Florida to show its mettle by putting a dagger in the Oilers before this Cup Final reaches a Game 7 situation that frankly Florida just doesn’t want to find itself in — especially not when McDavid is playing like a human cheat code.
Have the Oilers figured out the Panthers’ forecheck, and in turn, Bobrovsky?
Go back to what the Oilers did in the third period of Game 3. Even though they couldn’t force overtime, they did get two goals in the final frame, which is as many as they had in the series total before that point. Those goals signaled that the Oilers might have found a breakthrough against the Panthers’ forecheck and, potentially, Bobrovsky.
Scoring eight goals in Game 4 reinforced that idea, with the caveat that it was just one game. Scoring a shorthanded goal, a power-play goal and one in 5-on-5 play in Game 5 proved that the Oilers could generate chances in every sequence. McDavid’s goal that gave the Oilers a 3-0 lead capped a stretch that saw the Oilers score 12 of the past 13 goals in the series at that time, adding to the belief they may have finally found answers to their biggest problem.
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
The committee has released its second crack at the top 25, and it’s (almost) all Big Ten at the top.
That might seem a bit strange to the conference that boasts the most playoff-caliber teams and the most nonconference wins against other Power 4 leagues, and also has Paul Finebaum there to remind everyone just how angry they should be at this affront to good judgment.
With that, we’ll handle much of Finebaum’s homework for him. Here’s this week’s Anger Index.
1. The SEC
Eleven weeks into the 2024 season, and one thing seems abundantly clear: The SEC is the best conference in college football. Take a look at Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, for example, where nine of the top 17 teams are from the SEC. Or use ESPN’s FPI metric, where the SEC has spots 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9. Consider that the team currently ninth in the SEC standings, South Carolina, has three wins over SP+ top-40 teams and losses to the committee’s No. 10 and 22 teams by a combined total of five points.
Yes, the SEC’s dominance and depth seem obvious.
So, of course, four of the top five teams in the committee’s rankings this week are from the SEC.
Wait, no, sorry about that. We’re getting late word here that, in fact, it’s the Big Ten with teams No. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in this week’s rankings.
It’s not that those four Big Ten teams aren’t any good. Oregon (No. 1) has chewed up and spit out nearly all comers this season. Ohio State (No. 2) is the best squad the gross domestic product of Estonia can buy. Penn State (No. 4), well, the Nittany Lions still haven’t beaten Ohio State, but we assume the rest of the résumé is OK. Indiana (No. 5) is blowing the doors off people.
But that’s it. The rest of the Big Ten is a mess. You need a magnifying glass to find Michigan‘s QB production. Iowa finally learned how to score and somehow has gotten worse. Minnesota looked like the next-best team in the conference, and the Gophers have losses to North Carolina and Rutgers.
A lack of depth does not inherently mean the teams at the top are not elite. Indeed, the other teams in any conference remain independent variables when addressing the ceiling for any one team. If the Kansas City Chiefs joined the Sun Belt, Patrick Mahomes would still be a magician and Andy Reid would still be saying “Bundle-a-rooskie-doo” in your nightmares.
But the cold, hard facts are these: Indiana’s best win came last week against Michigan (No. 40 in SP+) by 3. Penn State’s best win (by SP+) came by 3 against a below-.500 USC team that just benched its QB. Ohio State is absolutely elite on paper, but on the field, the Buckeyes’ success is entirely buoyed by a 20-13 win at Penn State, a team we also know very little about.
The SEC gets flack for boasting of its greatness routinely, and to be sure, that narrative has often bolstered less-than-elite teams. But this year, every reasonable metric suggests the SEC’s production actually matches its ego, and when Ole Miss (No. 11), Georgia (No. 12), Alabama (No. 10) and Texas A&M (No. 15) — all with two losses — are dogged as a result of playing in a league where every other team warrants a spot in the top 25, it undermines the entire point of having a committee that can use its judgment rather than simply look at the standings.
Let’s compare two teams with blind résumés.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 14 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 20, loss came to a top-10 team by 3. Has four wins vs. Power 4 teams with a winning record, by an average of 14 points.
Team B: 8-1 record, No. 11 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 28, loss came to a top-15 team by 15. Has one win vs. a Power 4 team with a winning record, by 3.
So, which team has the better résumé?
This shouldn’t take too long to figure out. Team A looks better by almost every metric, right?
Well, Team A is SMU, who checks in at No. 14 in this week’s ranking.
Team B, though? That’d be the Mustangs’ old friends from the Southwest Conference, the Texas Longhorns. Texas checks in at No. 3.
Perhaps you’ve watched enough of both Texas and SMU to think the eye test favors the Longhorns. That’s fair. But should the eye test account for 11 spots in the rankings? At some point, the results have to matter more.
Or, perhaps it’s the brand that matters to the committee. If that same résumé belonged to a school that hadn’t just bought its way into the Power 4 this year, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t be in the top 10 with ease.
Let’s dig into three different teams still hoping for a playoff bid, even if the odds are against them at this point.
Team A: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 28 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 18 points.
Team B: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 25 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 13 points.
Team C: 7-2, no wins over SP+ top 40. No. 24 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 21 points.
You could split hairs here, but the bottom line is none has a particularly compelling résumé, and they’re all pretty similar.
So, who are they?
Team B is Iowa State, which plummeted from the rankings after losing two straight. But the committee isn’t supposed to care when you lost your games. Losing in September is not better than losing in November. At least that’s what they say.
Team A is Arizona State. Its 10-point loss to Cincinnati came without starting QB Sam Leavitt and was due, at least in part, to a kicking game so traumatic head coach Kenny Dillingham held an open tryout afterward. The Sun Devils and Cyclones are two of three two-loss Power 4 teams unranked this week (alongside Pitt), but unlike Iowa State and Pitt, Arizona State isn’t coming off back-to-back losses. The Sun Devils’ absence seems entirely correlated to the fact that no one believed this team would be any good entering the season, and so few people have looked closely enough to change their minds that the committee feels comfortable ignoring them.
The team the committee can’t ignore, however, is Team C. That would be Colorado. Coach Prime has convinced the world the Buffaloes are for real, even if nothing on their résumé — a No. 77 strength of schedule, worse than 7-2 Western Kentucky‘s — suggests that’s anything close to a certainty.
The Big 12 remains wide open, but it’s to the committee’s detriment that it has so eagerly dismissed two of the better teams just because they’re not as fun to talk about.
Has Missouri played with fire this year? You betcha. Just last week, the Tigers were on the verge of falling to Oklahoma before the Sooners’ woeful QB situation reared its ugly head again and the game ended in a 30-23 Tigers win.
But here’s the thing about playing with fire: So long as you don’t turn your living room into an inferno, it’s actually pretty impressive.
Missouri is 7-2 with wins against SP+ Nos. 26 and 28, and its only losses are to the committee’s No. 10 and No. 15 teams. SP+ has Missouri at No. 17, though we can chalk that up to Connelly’s hometown bias. But No. 23? After a top-10 season in 2023, don’t the Tigers deserve a little benefit of the doubt? They currently trail three three-loss teams (Louisville, South Carolina and LSU) and are behind Boise State, Colorado, Washington State and Clemson, who, combined, have exactly one win over SP+ top-40 teams.
There’s a good chance that, should Brady Cook not return to the lineup, Missouri will get waxed at South Carolina on Saturday, and then the argument is moot. But the committee isn’t supposed to look ahead and take guesses at what it believes might happen (Florida State’s snub last year notwithstanding). It’s supposed to judge based on what’s on the books so far, and putting Missouri this far down the rankings seems more than a tad harsh.
The committee threw a nice bone to the non-Power 4 schools this week, with four teams ranked, including No. 25 Tulane Green Wave. That seems deserved, given Tulane’s recent run. But what is it, exactly, that puts the Green Wave ahead of UNLV?
UNLV has the No. 31 strength of record. Tulane is No. 32.
UNLV has the No. 98 strength of schedule played. Tulane is No. 96.
Tulane has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team. UNLV has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team.
The key difference between the two is UNLV has wins against two Power 4 opponents — Houston and Kansas. Houston, by the way, just knocked off Kansas State, a team that beat Tulane.
So perhaps the committee should spread a bit more love outside the Power 4.
Also Angry: Pittsburgh Panthers (7-2, unranked), Duke Blue Devils (7-3, unranked), Georgia Bulldogs (7-2, No. 12), Utah Utes AD Mark Harlan (the Utes would be ranked if Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark hadn’t rigged the system!) and UConn Huskies (7-3, unranked and thus prohibiting us from Jim Mora Jr. giving a “You wanna talk about playoffs?!?” rant).
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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
Oregon remained No. 1 in the second rankings released by the College Football Playoff selection committee on Tuesday night.
The Ducks, who cruised past Maryland 39-18 last week to improve to 10-0, were followed by No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana.
BYU, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Miami, Alabama, Ole Miss and Georgia round out the committee’s top 12.
Miami’s first loss of the season, 28-23 at Georgia Tech, and Georgia’s second defeat, 28-10 at Ole Miss, shook up the committee’s rankings. The Hurricanes fell five spots to No. 9, while the Bulldogs dropped nine spots to No. 12.
Using the current rankings, Oregon (Big Ten), Texas (SEC), BYU (Big 12) and Miami (ACC) would be the four highest-rated conference champions and would receive first-round byes in the 12-team playoff.
Boise State is No. 13 in the committee’s rankings, but the Broncos would be included in the 12-team playoff as the fifth-highest-rated conference champion from the Mountain West.
The first-round matchups would look like this: No. 12 Boise State at No. 5 Ohio State; No. 11 Ole Miss at No. 6 Penn State, No. 10 Alabama at No. 7 Indiana; and No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 8 Tennessee.
Although Georgia, which captured two of the past three CFP national championships, is ranked No. 12 in the committee’s rankings, the Bulldogs would be the first team left out of the 12-team playoff.
SMU is No. 14, followed by Texas A&M, Kansas State, Colorado, Washington State, Louisville and Clemson.
South Carolina, LSU, Missouri, Army and Tulane close out the top 25.
The updated College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings 🏆 pic.twitter.com/ymA9wlI1dB
— ESPN (@espn) November 13, 2024
The Gamecocks and Green Wave made their CFP rankings debuts this season, replacing Iowa State and Pittsburgh, who were Nos. 17 and 18 last week, respectively.
There were nine SEC teams included in the committee’s rankings, four each from the ACC and Big Ten and three from the Big 12.
Georgia, which also fell 41-34 at Alabama on Sept. 28, plays what might be a CFP elimination game against Tennessee at Sanford Stadium on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET/ABC, ESPN+). Georgia is 14-3 after a loss under coach Kirby Smart, bouncing back after each of its previous eight defeats. The Bulldogs haven’t lost back-to-back games in the regular season since 2016, Smart’s first season coaching his alma mater.
Georgia has defeated Tennessee in seven of its past eight contests, including a 38-10 win on the road last season.
Asked about the CFP implications of the game on Monday, Smart said his team had to solely focus on beating the Volunteers.
“I don’t ever take those approaches,” Smart said. “I don’t think they’re the right way to go about things. I think you’re trying to win your conference all the time, and to do that you’ve got to win your games at home. You’ve got to play well on the road, which we have and haven’t. We’ve done both, but I like making it about who we play and how we play, and less about just outcomes.”
BYU survived a 22-21 scare at Utah last week. With Miami’s loss, the Cougars jumped the Hurricane as the third-highest-rated conference champion. BYU hosts Kansas on Saturday, followed by a road game at Arizona State on Nov. 23 and home game against Houston the next week. According to ESPN Analytics, BYU is the heavy favorite (92%) to earn a spot in the Big 12 title game and also win it (40%).
Army would be the next-highest-rated conference champion behind Boise State, one spot ahead of fellow AAC program Tulane. The Black Knights improved to 9-0 with last week’s 14-3 victory at North Texas. They’ll have their best chance to make a statement to the selection committee in their next game, against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium in New York on Nov. 23.
The four first-round games will be played at the home campus of the higher-seeded teams on Dec. 20 and 21. The four quarterfinal games will be staged at the VRBO Fiesta Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl presented by Prudential and Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
The two semifinal games will take place at the Capital One Orange Bowl and Goodyear Cotton Bowl on Jan. 9 and 10.
The CFP National Championship presented by AT&T is scheduled for Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
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