Edmonton Oilers forward Connor Brown will be keeping his own blog throughout the 2025 Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers. He will check in regularly with behind-the-scenes access.
In his fourth entry, after a 5-4 overtime win against the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena that tied the best-of-7 series 2-2, Brown talks about the crazy second-period comeback that got them back in the game, which was fueled by an emotional speech by veteran Corey Perry during the intermission. He also talked about the winning goal, credited to Leon Draisaitl after bouncing off the shin pads of Florida defenseman Niko Mikkola, as well as what awaits in Game 5 at Rogers Place on Saturday.
Well, we sure are giving the fans a show in this series. It’s been a wild roller coaster.
During that first intermission, Perry stepped up and delivered a much-need message to our group about discipline, stepping up. We knew we couldn’t get it all back at once. We just had to tilt the rink and start playing with confidence, playing our game and I think that’s what we did when we took over in the second period.
We had a good third period and we let it slip but we showed some resolve in overtime there.
That first goal by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the second period was so big. It got us on our way. Believe it or not, I truly believe that everyone in that room believed that we had a chance to come back in that game. We had our head wrapped around it.
Obviously, we were frustrated. It was exactly what we didn’t want to do in the first period; take three penalties, have them score on a 5-on-3 and give them all the momentum with a 3-0 lead. It’s not what we wanted to do in that game.
We had to regroup and reset, it shows a lot of character and it shows a real championship mindset that our group has.
You know, know we are human beings. Any one of us would be lying if we said we weren’t frustrated. We are not robots programmed to think positively. We had to go through the ebbs and flows of our emotions during the game. The biggest thing is to face our mistakes; don’t run from them.
We had to face the things that were hurting us, like high-sticking penalties. It’s ridiculous, we were taking too many high-sticking calls. We have to check with our feet.
The key to sports is to overcome your natural instincts. Everyone, down 3-0, you just want to sink into a shell and quit. But there’s no quit in this group.
The switch from Stuart Skinner to Calvin Pickard in goal to start the second period also helped.
Calvin is an amazing goalie, competes so hard, works so hard, but his unique chemistry with the team is unquantifiable. This makes him 7-0 in the playoffs this season and like I said, there is something that you can’t really put into words or you can’t really measure. The chemistry that we have with Calvin in the net is very, very high. That goes for ‘Skins’ as well. But when Pickard goes in there, it’s a big boost.
He made a lot of big saves after he got in and he had no chance on that last one to send the game to overtime. He made some big saves, some amazing saves and one big one in overtime on Sam Bennett.
He’s a gamer.
You know, it was hard to give up that tying goal so late in the third period. But like I said, in the locker room, if you would have given us a tie game heading into overtime after that first period, we all would have taken it. So, we kind of flipped the perspective. Obviously, it was a bit disappointing to go in there for intermission, but at least we got ourselves to overtime after being down 3-0 against the defending Stanley Cup champion, one of the best teams in the League at defending the lead.
We’ve come back on them twice now in this series and it is up to us to learn from all the good in that game and move forward.
We have had a lot of feathers like that in our cap. We are a unique team. We have guys that are pushing boundaries, breaking records, we have a very unique group and we don’t think anything is impossible with this team.
On the winning play, we got a good bounce with the puck going off Mikkola, but that is a strong play by Leon going to the net. What is that, four overtime winners in these playoffs? It’s pretty incredible. Fortune was on our side tonight.
Now we get to go home for Game 5, and we love playing at home. The best thing about playing at home is it’s easy to have fun.
Our team is playing well and we are having fun and it is pretty easy to have fun in that group in that building .
I think it is time this team takes a step here.
