Game 3 Notebook: Nugent-Hopkins’ status causes concern for Oilers ...Middle East

SUNRISE, Fla. — The biggest concern around the Edmonton Oilers on Monday morning was the availability of centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the most versatile of the team’s forwards, who was listed by head coach Kris Knoblauch as a “game-time decision” for Game 3.

“He’ll take warm up, and we’ll decide from there,” Knoblauch said.

Nugent-Hopkins is an integral part of the Oilers’ power play, and alongside Adam Henrique, he starts every penalty kill. And perhaps most importantly, he can adeptly move from Connor McDavid’s left wing to centre the second line, affording Knoblauch his nuclear option of playing McDavid and Leon Draisaitl together when trailing later in a game.

“Yeah, we don’t have as much versatility if we are missing a centreman,” Knoblauch admitted. “Centremen are so important just to move around, and we don’t have a lot of centermen on our roster.”

Nugent-Hopkins’ injury is undisclosed. He joined the Oilers’ morning skate late on Monday and tested things out, but did not skate particularly hard.

With the Stanley Cup within reach, the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers are set to battle once again for hockey’s ultimate prize. Watch every game of the Final on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.

Broadcast schedule

Panthers need more from Reinhart, Barkov

Paul Maurice looks at Aleksander Barkov’s stat line through the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final — no goals, no assists, and a minus-4 — and can only come to one conclusion.

“We’re trading him,” deadpanned the Florida Panthers coach.

Humour is our great reliever of pressure, our distractor from uncomfortable truths. But there is no skirting around the issue that Edmonton’s top two forwards are severely outduelling Florida’s so far.

It’s one thing to see the three-time Selke champ get posterized by McDavid in the Assist of the Year, it’s another to realize the Cats have been outscored 4-0 at even strength with their top centreman on the ice.

Barkov has gone four games without a goal and is a minus-9 over that span.

Linemate and Selke runner-up Sam Reinhart, who sniped 39 in the regular season, has just one goal over his past nine games. He’s a minus-3 in this series.

How would the coach assess their play against the Oilers?

“Really good,” Maurice said. “And I understand the question because the plus/minus isn’t kind to the game that they play. But (Barkov has been) outstanding in what he’s doing. So, he blocks a shot (in Game 2), he goes back to the ice, it’s in the back of the net. He gets the minus for that.

“When you look at the important times in the game that he’s been on the ice at critical times, they’ve just been so good, so smart. I get it. I looked at that. In this series, his minus isn’t very favourable, but he’s on the ice at the most important times.”

Reinhart was battling an injury late in the regular season and simply doesn’t resemble the player who potted 10 goals, including the silver one, in Florida’s run to the 2024 Cup.

Watch this shift:

Or take a peek at how badly the star misses the net on a clean break in Game 2:

“At that point in the game, you’re not expecting that much time and space,” Reinhart said. “You just have to move on. It’s not my first mistake; it’s not going to be the last one. So, you just got to accept them.”

Panthers fans might just have to accept that Reinhart and, perhaps, Barkov are not quite in top shape this June. (Hey, that was the case with Draisaitl a year ago.)

But as the series shifts to Sunrise, at least Maurice has last change and the option of getting them a few more favourable matchups.

“You’re talking about one of the toughest tests in hockey against some of these players,” Reinhart pointed out. “We’ve always been fortunate enough to have the depth to pull our team along.

“Certainly, we would like to be on the board a little more, but that’s not something that keeps us up at night. We’re trying to win hockey games as a group, and that’s where our focus is.”

Line dance

We’ll set our lines with Nugent-Hopkins in the lineup, knowing that Jeff Skinner will replace him somewhere in the lineup if RHN can not play. Edmonton jumbled up its defensive pairings at Sunday’s practice, but we don’t see that stretching into tonight’s game.

Here’s how we believe the Oilers will set up:

Nugent-Hopkins – McDavid – PerryKane – Draisaitl – KapanenFrederic – Henrique – BrownPodkolzin – Janmark – Arvidsson

Ekholm – BouchardNurse – KulakWalman – Klingberg

Skinner

On Florida’s side, A.J. Greer, 28, will make his Stanley Cup Final debut Monday now that he’s recovered from his lower-body injury. (Jesper Boqvist returns to the press box.)

To think, the fourth-line journeyman nearly gave up on the NHL five years ago.

“When I was in Bridgeport, I wasn’t playing well,” Greer said. “I was going through off-ice stuff. So, yeah, I was pretty much 24 hours away from just calling it, going to Europe, trying to just get a paycheque. Trying to squeeze out every dollar that I can out of this sport, and then live my life.

“When you’re not really wanting to go to the rink, when you don’t feel like you’re having a great day in the gym, you try to push through that. Because these are the moments that motivate you.

“So, it’s definitely a dream come true.”

Verhaeghe – Barkov – Reinhart Rodrigues – Bennett – Tkachuk Luostarinen – Lundell – Marchand Greer – Nosek – Gadjovich

Forsling – Ekblad Mikkola – Jones Schmidt – Kulikov

Bobrovsky

Crease crashing

Just as NHL coaches are nearly unanimous in their inability to know what constitutes goaltender interference and what does not, players are also wondering what and how much they can get away with when it comes to contacting the opposing goalie.

Or, in the spirit of playing the Panthers, what Sam Bennett can get away with.

“Obviously, you don’t like when guys are purposely falling into your goaltender. That’s never good, and you hope that gets noticed,” said Evander Kane. “We’ve seen a lot of calls go different ways, and it’s hard to determine (what is allowed). You like to think there’s some obvious ones, but every now and again, you get surprised.”

Bennett walks the line as well as anyone, but he’s been falling on goalies for four rounds in these playoffs. And even Kane admitted, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it, with power plays so precious at this time of year.

“You can’t go out and take a two-, a five- and a 10- (minute penalty) in the first period. That wouldn’t help anybody,” Kane said. “But there are other ways to handle it. Staying aggressive and going hard to their net as well.”

You know that Knoblauch and GM Stan Bowman are working series manager Kris King daily on the topic. Bennett was given a minor penalty when he fell on Stu Skinner’s leg in Game 2.

“It’s a fine line, and you just trust that the referees who call it and enforce it properly,” said Knoblauch. “What’s contact? What propels a player into the crease? A player can always spin, or take the other route, or go through the crease …

“I took physics in high school, but that was a long time ago. But when there’s an action from one side, (there is) a counteraction. But if you’re pushing to left and he falls right and or backwards …”

Line of fire

Just because Evan Bouchard can hammer a puck 99.6 miles an hour doesn’t mean the Panthers forwards can be selective about whose point shot to block and whose to flamingo.

“Maybe in the regular season, you might flinch a little bit. You might think about it. But it’s the Stanley Cup Final,” Evan Rodrigues said of the Bouch Bomb. “Yeah, it might hurt a bit more, but you’re doing what you can to get in front of it.”

It’s not only shots that require sacrifice.

Take Gustav Forsling’s sprawling stick-check of Kane in Game 2, a masterful blend of risk and technique:

“You cannot be scared to get a puck in the face. You’ve gotta practice it, for sure,” Forsling explained. There’s an art to sprawling out to defend a 2-on-1.

“You want to force the forward to either shoot it quick or try to make a pass. You’ve gotta have the right timing, and obviously the time (changes) if he’s righty or lefty on how you slide. You want to have momentum going at the guy, too, but don’t want to trip him either. It’s hard.”

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