At the point when an athlete or, in hockey, a team as a collective begins to fear failure, winning often becomes difficult, if not impossible. In the middle of such a situation, Florida is represented by four Finnish players in the final series of the NHL. It already led the final series with 3–0 wins, but after Friday night’s 1–5 loss, the series is – incredibly – tied at 3–3.
From the fear of losing, Florida has grown into an identity within the series.
Florida is building a historic disaster for its head coach by Paul Maurice under. The Canadian coach, known for his supplicity and sense of humor, almost laughed at the first defeat and actually belittled the second one. Maurice came to Canada in good spirits, claiming with bright eyes that there was no problem in Florida and that the team was in a good situation. In the desired situation.
This is after Florida first suffered a 1-8 loss in the foursome in Canada and then played at most a mediocre match on their home court.
We saw each other behind the bench on Friday Alexander Barkov furious Maurice after a disallowed goal. After the four game, the GM of the club Bill Zito was filmed in his shed smacking a bottle of water.
Panic on
All this is reflected on the ice, where the team performed two sets on Friday in a full-body cast as if in full panic, even though it was in the lead in the series and one win away from the championship.
Panic and a huge fear of loss is a direct result of the events at the rink. It may be that the 8–1 rout was too much for Florida, even for the coaching staff. In terms of play, the Oilers have disarmed Florida almost completely, and for example, there is nothing left of the famous fury and exploitation game of the pack of cats.
In the four and five games, Florida played its best moments only when the Oilers had built a three-goal lead.
Experienced in everything, the second most experienced coach in NHL history, Maurice and his staff are losing the game rookie coach To Kurt Knoblauch in an ugly way.
For example, on Friday, the match had already been played for a long time in the second period, when Florida had two goals on the board and Florida’s attackers had two shots. And when the five-on-five game starts raining, even the sense of superiority has disappeared. The Panthers have made it to the final series with one hit in 18 attempts – and the action on the ice is more worrying than the poor percentages.
In the fourth and fifth games, the Oilers scored their opening goal underpowered.
Edmonton grown together
Suddenly, Edmonton is a much more confident and frankly better quality, and even more unified team than Florida. At the beginning of the playoffs, I didn’t believe for a second that the depth of Edmonton’s players would be enough for the championship, but Edmonton, which has already been through hell in the regular season, has grown together in a fantastic way. The oil group is much more than the sum of its parts.
It can also be seen in the statistics. Edmonton’s bottom chains are playing a wonderful series of final matches and in the finals alone there are thirteen different goal scorers. Florida’s count is eleven.
And Florida’s top players don’t deserve a good grade from the last matches either. Aleksander Barkov was clearly the best of his team on Friday, but the three previous matches have not been the Tampere’s best. Admittedly, this reflects not only the structural problems in the game, but also the mental state of the collective.
Barkov pier Carter Verhaeghe has eight goals in the final match series power statistics. Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk and so on. The ship is going down under the leadership of the top players.
It’s still not good to forget that the game is always relative to the opponent. Edmonton was on the canvas for the first time already in October, when it started the season like a nightmare. The change of coach and growing pains under a new pilot closer to spring and in the spring have marinated the team’s incredible collective.
Friday’s game was the fifth time this spring that Edmonton’s season was suspended. It has cleared every one of the opponents’ match balls. The performance is incredible.
The goalkeeper builds his own story within the story Stuart Skinner. Skinner has been suspected throughout the season, and for good reason, and in the second round against Vancouver, he was even benched for two games. The likable boy from his own village fought his way back to the playing lineup, finally breaking the necks of Vancouver in a deadlock game, Dallas in a game of six, and now Florida, who has lost a 3-0 lead, is in the works.
Skinner is by a clear margin the best goalkeeper in the match series.
At the other end, under the merciless pressure of the home crowd Sergei Bobrovsky is in trouble for the second summer in a row. Before Friday’s match, Bobrovski’s combined save percentage in last and this summer’s final series was 85.8, and the average number of goals conceded was 3.85. And this didn’t change in the sixth game: three behinds and a save percentage of 84.
Responsible for coaching
It’s incredible how Florida, which has been undeniably the best team in the NHL all season, has started to leak from every point in a 3-0 lead, both on a coaching, individual and collective level. There is full panic and therefore the worst disaster in the NHL finals since the spring of 1945. Would Maurice see a reason to react in his team’s situation or is everything still fine and the situation optimal?
Florida’s ski left the track in the quadruple game and the coaching didn’t seem to have taken it seriously. Now the situation is difficult in terms of coaching, because tough love doesn’t work anymore, that time was earlier. A wounded team cannot be hardened anymore. The side and, above all, between the ears have been hit to such an extent that three days is a short time to recover from them.