GAME RECAP: Oilers 6, Stars 1 (Game 3)

EDMONTON, AB – Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman each scored two goals, and Stuart Skinner made 33 saves for the Edmonton Oilers in a dominant 6-1 victory over the Dallas Stars at Rogers Place in Game 3 of the Western Conference Final on Sunday afternoon.

“You have to win games in different ways," McDavid said. "You have to have dominant nights, you have to have nights where maybe your goalie is better than theirs. You have to have nights where your special teams get it done. That wasn’t tonight, although I thought the kill was good.

"Five-on-five has been really good. It’s been our strength all playoffs long, which is maybe new for this group. We’ve relied on the power play for a long time, and for whatever reason, it hasn’t been clicking. You have to find ways to win different games in different ways, and we did it again tonight.”

Evan Bouchard and Connor McDavid tallied goals 36 seconds apart during the first period to make it 2-0 after 20 minutes before the captain notched his second goal and NHL-leading 22nd playoff point with less than a minute left in the second after forward Jason Robertson halved the Stars' deficit.

"I thought we were fortunate to be up after 40, but I thought Stu did a great job," McDavid said. "We played really solid in front of him in Game 2 and not solid tonight, but he gave us a chance to get our legs into it and give us a chance to win."

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins assisted on Bouchard and McDavid's first-period tallies before he recorded the primary helper on Hyman's first of two goals in the final stanza to give himself three assists, pushing his totals in this series to seven points (2G, 5A) in three games.

"We're all just doing our thing and trying to chip in where we can, and our line got a couple tonight," Nugent-Hopkins said. "It's nice to see them go in for us and to capitalize when we get our chances."

Hyman scored top shelf on a breakaway 3:25 into the third period before the winger deflected home Evander Kane's pass on a two-on-one over the shoulder of Jake Oettinger over half a period later for his fifth goal of the playoffs, extending Edmonton's lead to 5-1 before John Klingberg became the 18th different Oilers skater to find the back of the net in these playoffs with a power-play goal in the final three minutes of regulation.

The Oilers lead the series 2-1 heading into Tuesday night's Game 4 at Rogers Place, when they'll have the opportunity to push the Stars to the brink.

FIRST PERIOD

Make that six out of seven periods the Oilers have owned to begin this Western Conference Final after they started Game 3 on Sunday afternoon with the exact same effort as they did in the first two games of the series in Dallas – playing on the front foot and being the first team to find the scoresheet.

The Oilers pressed early in the opening five minutes with an imposing shift from their top line of Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid and Hyman, hemming the Stars into their own zone to absorb Edmonton's relentless attack that needed Jake Oettinger to make an important early stop against Hyman from the right side.

Fresh off securing his third shutout in his last four games, Stuart Skinner was called into action on the Stars' next rush up ice by coming across to get his blocker down in time to turn away a dangerous look for forward Colin Blackwell after it opened up from a pass from Miro Heiskanen that found its way under Jake Walman in front of the crease.

"The way we play defensively impacts goaltending so much," Nugent-Hopkins said. "We obviously need to be sharp in front of him, give him every chance to make the easy saves, and then sometimes he needs to step up and make the big ones. He's been doing that, so it's definitely got to go both ways."

Skinner was seeing the puck well early in Game 3 and looked locked in between the pipes, hoping to put in another terrific performance despite the outlier for both himself and the Oilers during the third period of their Game 1 defeat back on Wednesday.

"I don't know if the puck gets bigger, but the game definitely seems to slow down," Skinner said. "I think if you talk to any player at the top level, like if you talk to Davo, I bet the game seems really slow for him every game. That's kind of what you're hoping for. Sometimes, it's trying to get the game as slow as possible, especially for a goalie. It can make a huge difference."

"You see that he's competitive, he wants to perform for us, and we see him compete every day," Nugent-Hopkins added.

The Oilers took the lead before the three-quarter mark of the period by turning a defensive-zone faceoff into an exit from their own zone and a neutral-zone turnover forced by Zach Hyman that allowed Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the space to set up Evan Bouchard to score the opening goal.

After Hyman took it away from Miro Heiskanen near the Dallas blueline, Nugent-Hopkins picked up the loose puck and used his body to shield it around Esa Lindell coming across the slot before finding the trailer in Bouchard, who blasted home a low one-timer to open the scoring at 1-0 on his sixth of the playoffs.

Bouchard's second goal of the series tied him for the team lead in goals along with Leon Draisaitl, tying his career high from the 2024 postseason when he finished with six goals and 26 assists (32 points) in 25 games.

The Oilers scored 1:13 apart in the second period of their Game 2 victory in Dallas on Friday night, and they nearly halved that return on Sunday when they took a 2-0 advantage through their captain just 36 seconds after Bouchard blasted his side into a 1-0 lead.

McDavid won the puck up high in the defensive zone and chipped it past Thomas Harley to create a three-on-two with the two instigators of Edmonton's opening goal in Nugent-Hopkins and Bouchard, with defenceman Cody Ceci being forced to defend the off-man rush against his former teammates.

After working a quick give-and-go with Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid sniped his fourth of the postseason over the left shoulder of Oettinger to give the Oilers a 2-0 lead and the captain 21 points in the playoffs – good enough for sole possession of first place ahead of Leon Draisaitl and Mikko Rantanen.

"I think people forget he's a 60-goal scorer," Hyman said. "He's probably an underrated goal scorer. He can score goals. He makes the right play, whether it's a pass or a goal, and he's the best player in the world. When he has an opportunity to shoot it and he shoots it, there's a good chance it goes in."

Nugent-Hopkins assisted on both first-period goals for his second straight multi-point game, tying him for third on the team with 10 points in these playoffs.

"For his whole career, he's been able to be a two-way player. He's just that type of guy," Skinner said of Nugent-Hopkins. "I mean, that's why he's such a huge part of our team and a huge part of the organization. He's a leader in here. Just his work ethic every single day and what he says in the room. He does it with great composure, too, so it's very impressive. I've always been a huge fan of him."

In the final seconds of the period, winger Kasperi Kapanen was forced to take a seat in the penalty box on a botched high-sticking call from the officials that saw Rantanen have his own stick hit him in the face, meaning the Oilers would start the middle frame on the penalty kill.

SECOND PERIOD

You've gotta lean on your leaders when things start getting tough in the playoffs.

After the Stars had their best stretch of play in the second and cut the lead to 2-1 on Jason Robertson's deflection with 4:25 left in the middle frame, Skinner continued to battle and hold off the visitors' press for an equalizer before McDavid notched his second goal of the contest to slow down the Stars' surge.

"They brought a ton of speed. They got a lot of o-zone time. They got some good chances," Skinner said of Dallas' push in the middle frame. "At that point, we're just trying to keep things at bay. We knew that was going to happen. They were down 2-0 at that point, so you knew that they were going to come out hard and give them everything that they had. They definitely did that."

"They were definitely the better team in the second period, and we knew that going into the third, we kind of had to reset and battle it out."

Rantanen gave the hosts an early scare by ringing the post on a hard one-timer from the right circle on their leftover power play from the first period, with the Oilers escaping with the penalty kill on their only short-handed assignment of the first 40 minutes on Sunday afternoon.

Skinner continued to stand tall by stopping Sam Steel on two good whacks in front before the Oilers found themselves with a power play near the period's halfway mark that soon became a five-on-three for 18 seconds when Draisaitl was tripped up by the Edmonton product near the end of the man advantage.

The Oilers could've cashed in to make the deficit much more difficult to overturn, but the penalty kill generated some momentum for the Stars heading into the final five minutes of the frame, outplaying Edmonton for a stretch to pull it back to 2-1 before McDavid restored the two-goal lead in the last minute.

"I thought we had a bit of a dip and they had a bit of a push in the second," Nugent-Hopkins said. "You know it's going to happen. [Skinner] stepped up big time for us and made some big saves, and you need your goalie to do that. He definitely stepped up for us. I thought it was a pretty good simple start, and we capitalized it near the end of the first, but we just kept rolling from there."

Alex Petrovic flattened Connor Brown with a hard check along the boards after coming down from the blueline before Lian Bichsel took a shot on goal at the end of a long shift in Edmonton's zone for the Stars that Robertson tipped five-hole on Skinner to make it 2-1 with his first goal of the 2025 playoffs.

The Stars looked their most dangerous in the second period before McDavid notched his second goal of the contest with 19 seconds remaining to stop Dallas in their tracks before the intermission and restore their advantage to two goals at the end of an extended shift in the Dallas zone.

"We know he's a good goalscorer," Nugent-Hopkins said. "I mean, he scores a lot of goals at big moments for us all the time. He's so good at creating space for other guys that you see him dish it off a lot, but we know when the time's right, he's going to put them in."

After trying to wrap the puck in from behind the Dallas net moments earlier, McDavid got the puck back along the boards from a keep-in made by Bouchard before he waltzed in with space and shot far side over the blocker of Oettinger, extending his playoff-leading total to 22 points (5G, 17A) in 14 games.

"Massive. So crucial," Skinner said of McDavid's goal. "They had all the momentum. Even halfway through the first, I think they started getting that momentum, so that killed their momentum for the last couple of minutes."

THIRD PERIOD

Keep your foot on the pedal and don't stop.

That was the Oilers' mantra en route to padding their lead in the third period to an insurmountable 6-1 advantage over the Stars, powering their way to a commanding win on home ice to take a 2-1 series lead in the Western Conference Final.

Skinner did everything to stop Matt Duchene from getting the slightest touches on a loose puck beneath his feet in the crease to push it over the goal line in the first few minutes of the third, which proved a big moment when Hyman went back the other direction to bury his first of two goals in the frame that put Game 3 out of reach for Dallas.

Amidst the confusion in the Edmonton zone from their impossible clearance out of their own crease, Hyman got lost among the chaos in the neutral zone to get sprung on a breakaway by Evander Kane before coming in alone and roofing his shot top shelf on Oettinger for the 4-1 lead.

"That play sums up the game, I guess. It wasn't the cleanest game," Hyman said. "They had a couple of looks before Stu bailed this out. We turned it over a couple of times, and then there was a break, and I got behind the D and Nuge made an amazing pass."

Hyman wasn't done there, scoring his second of the game and his fifth of the playoffs by connecting with Nugent-Hopkins at 12:06 of the final frame, this time on a two-on-one rush where he deflected his pass over the glove of Oettinger to all but secure the victory for Edmonton with under eight minutes left.

In addition to his playoff point totals with five goals and six assists in 14 games, Hyman has also thrown a League-leading 109 hits in the playoffs as a physical force on the forecheck, showing the lengths the OIlers are willing to go this postseason to get the job done.

"It's impressive to watch, amazing to watch, and I get a front row seat to it every night," McDavid said of Hyman. "So he's a wrecking ball out there right now. Everybody's buying in and doing things that're maybe not the most comfortable things to do, or something they're not used to doing, and he's leading the way that way."

There was still time for the Oilers to tack on another goal and increase the number of their players who've scored a goal in these playoffs to 18 skaters, courtesy of defenceman John Klingberg wristing a shot through traffic on a late power play to make it 6-1 Edmonton against his former team of eight years.

Before Klingberg's late PPG, all five of their previous five goals were scored at even strength, nullifying the need for extra power-play heroics from the Oilers after their penalty kill remained perfect for a second straight contest in Game 3 by going 2-for-2.

"Of course, you want your game to be going at five-on-five and not have to rely on the power play," Nugent-Hopkins said. "But at the same time, we want to be able to step up and score timely goals on the PP, and I know it's coming. We've just got to stick with it."