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| | Edmonton goaltender Ty Conklin's mishandling of the puck late in the third period of Game 1 allowed Carolina's Rod Brind'Amour to score the game-winning goal.
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Game 1 miscue evokes
Oilers memories
By Doug Ward | NHL.com correspondent
June 7, 2006
For longtime Edmonton fans, much of the Oilers' remarkable postseason run this spring has been about '80s nostalgia, as they've relived the glory of four Stanley Cup championship teams between 1984-88. On Monday, however, the Oilers and the people of Edmonton were taken back to one of the few '80s nights they'd just as soon forget: April 30, 1986.
On that date, at 5:14 of the third period of a 2-2 game at Northlands Coliseum, Edmonton defenseman Steve Smith sent an ill-advised clearing pass through his own goal crease. The puck caromed of Oiler goaltender Grant Fuhr, and into the net, with the resulting goal credited to Calgary's Perry Berezan. The fluke goal gave the Flames a 3-2 lead they never relinquished, and gave them a berth in the Final, where Calgary ultimately lost to Montreal.
It was impossible not flash back to that night when Oiler goaltender Ty Conklin, while operating behind his net, tried to clear the puck, but instead backhanded it off defenseman Jason Smith's stick late in Monday night's Game 1. The puck ended up in the goal crease, where Carolina's Rod Brind'Amour easily scored the game-winner into an open net with just 31.1 seconds remaining.
Doug Ward knows his way around the hockey rink and the baseball diamond. He is the Anaheim Angels' director of publications and is in his second season chronicling the hockey happenings in the Western Conference for NHL.com.
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Two decades ago, Steve Smith's misfortune came in the middle of Edmonton's remarkable four-out-five Stanley Cup run. What's remarkable about that painful chapter in the club's history is how everyone stuck together while a monumental gaffe deprived the Oilers of a chance to win their third consecutive Stanley Cup.
"We lost as a team," Edmonton coach Glen Sather said at the time. "We had plenty of time (after Smith's error) to come back."
"The players have stuck by me," Smith said in a subdued Oiler locker room that night. "It was a human error, and I'll have to live with it forever."
His teammates shared the burden.
Had Smith, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday, not put the puck in his own net, it's not unreasonable to assume a team that had scored an NHL record 426 goals during the regular season, and had Grant Fuhr in net, would have found a way to win Game 7.
The Oilers would have then had to solve a hot young goaltender named Patrick Roy in the Finals, but had they been able to do so, they would have secured their third of what eventually would have been five straight Stanley Cups. They would have joined Montreal (1956-60) as the only team to have won five consecutive Cups.
Instead, the Oilers and Wayne Gretzky had to settle for winning four-out-of-five Cups, with a pair of back-to-back titles sandwiching Smith's own goal.
A year after Smith's mistake, after the Oilers had regained their place atop the hockey world with a seven-game ouster of Philadelphia in the Final, Gretzky made a classy gesture when he handed the Stanley Cup to Smith and sent him off on a celebratory whirl around the Northlands Coliseum ice.
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During the 1986 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Edmonton's Steve Smith sent an ill-advised pass through his own goal crease that resulted in a fluke goal for the Calgary Flames.
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This Oiler team has spent the past two months channeling the glory of the franchise's elite teams. After the events of Monday, they showed the same grace displayed by Gretzky and Co. during trying times.
"I just froze a little bit," the stand-up Conklin, who was filling in for the injured Dwayne Roloson said. "It wasn't the play I wanted to make, obviously."
Said Chris Pronger: "It's a tough loss, but it's only one game."
That's the one big difference between Smith's miscue 20 years ago and the one Conklin and another Smith tag-teamed on Monday night. In 1986, the Oilers had a mere 14:46 to make things right. This year's team has at least two games to erase the blunder and change the tone of the series before they get in too deep.
Up to this point in the postseason, the 2006 Oilers have been the equals of the franchise's best teams. After Game 1, the question is whether they can be better.
Who's better -- Chris Pronger made NHL history Monday night when he became the first player ever to convert a penalty shot in the Stanley Cup Final. The opportunity arose because the Oilers were awarded a penalty shot when Niclas Wallin cover the puck with his hand in the crease. Because the Oilers had their fourth line on the ice, coach Craig MacTavish opted to have Pronger take the shot rather than one of his fourth-line grinders. Pronger had never attempted a penalty shot in an NHL game. Nine other players had attempted penalty shots in the Final, with the last time coming in 1994, when Vancouver's Pavel Bure was stopped by the Rangers' Mike Richter.
Rumor mill -- Marc Habscheid, coach of Canada's national team has joined former Red Wing coach Dave Lewis, Portland Pirates coach Kevin Dineen, and Manitoba Moose coach Alain Vigneault on the list of possible replacements for the deposed Marc Crawford, behind the Canucks' bench. ... Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe on Ryan Smyth, a potential unrestricted free agent this summer: "He should be an Oiler forever. He forever has epitomized what an Oiler is."
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