SUNRISE, Fla. -- The speech came in the first intermission.
We don’t know exactly what Corey Perry said in the Edmonton Oilers locker room. But we do know we couldn’t repeat it here, anyway, and it sparked a comeback that culminated in a 5-4 overtime win against the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena on Thursday.
Forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins paraphrased it like this: “Wake up. Look where we are and the position we’re in.” Defenseman Darnell Nurse said Perry told his teammates to “get to work,” although, well, um, “the tone might have been a little different.”
After a 6-1 loss in Game 3, the Oilers fell behind 3-0 and were outshot 17-7 in the first period of Game 4.
They faced the prospect of a 3-1 deficit in the best-of-7 series. Of the 39 teams that have trailed 3-1 in the Cup Final, one has come back to win the series: the Toronto Maple Leafs against the Detroit Red Wings in 1942.
“We wanted to come out strong tonight, but they put us on our heels early, and we were kind of lollygagging around a little bit,” forward Leon Draisaitl said. “Certainly not the time to lollygag around, especially after getting spanked in Game 3. Corey spoke up.”
Perry did not want this to slip away. He won the Cup with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007, when he was 22 and in his second NHL season. But the 40-year-old forward hasn’t won it since.
Four times in the previous five seasons, he has lost in the Cup Final -- with the Dallas Stars in 2020, the Montreal Canadiens in 2021, the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022 and the Oilers last year, when they came back from a 3-0 deficit only to lose to the Panthers in seven games.
“You don’t get this opportunity too many times, and there’s reasons for that, and this league is so good that you have to take that opportunity and run with it,” Perry said earlier in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. “You have to be urgent. You have to be in the moment, present, and take advantage of where we are.”
Perry has been a huge part of Edmonton’s run. He has nine goals, second on the Oilers behind Draisaitl (11), and leads the team with five power-play goals.
This was the 235th playoff game of his NHL career, moving him past Claude Lemieux into fifth place in League history behind Chris Chelios (266), Nicklas Lidstrom (263), Patrick Roy (247) and Mark Messier (236).
“He’s been in these moments,” Draisaitl said. “He’s not a guy that speaks up or yells at guys all the time. That’s not his character, so you know when a guy like that with that many games, that much experience … He’s won everything there is to win. He knows how to win. When he speaks up, you listen, and it grabs your attention. So, yeah, he’s a heck of a leader.”
Even on a team full of veterans.
“It’s probably not that we haven’t heard it before,” Nurse said. “It’s more so the fact that it just needed to be said in that moment. Evey once in a while, you just need a reminder of what needs to be done [to execute] in certain moments. Sometimes you need someone to just come in and talk and grab your focus and put it back on the game, and that’s what he did.”
Edmonton responded in the second period, tying the game 3-3 and outshooting Florida 17-10. After defenseman Jake Walman gave the Oilers a 4-3 lead at 13:36 of the third, Panthers forward Sam Reinhart tied the game 4-4 with the goalie pulled for an extra attacker with 19.5 seconds left in the third. Draisaitl won it at 11:18 of OT.
