Things we think we know: Oilers surely are giving NHL their Bennett thoughts

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Things We (Think We) Know. Series III, Volume IV.

Florida Panthers centre Sam Bennett “fell” on/was “pushed” into/had his heel “kicked” by Stu Skinner in Game 2, landing on an opposing goalie for the umpteenth time in these playoffs.

Bennett comes to rest on goalies’ limbs and craniums the way that family of blue jays returns to nest in the backyard at the end of each day. All Bennett is missing in Skinner’s crease through two games of the Stanley Cup Final is a few twigs, his young, and a beak full of worms.

Things We (Think We) Know

If series manager Kris King is not already on to Bennett’s migratory habits, he is being made aware of it on the morning of every game when he meets with Edmonton Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch and/or GM Stan Bowman and gets an earful of complaints about the burly and bearded Panthers winger.

Look, every team wants a Sam Bennett. But we would ask, where does (potentially) injuring goalies fall inside hockey’s murky code of “good, physical play” and that old chestnut, “No one wants to see anyone get hurt out there?”

They eliminated Raffi Torres for injuring forwards, and every team has 12 of those.

It’s so NHL that they’ve been calling off perfectly good goals all season long because some forward’s proximity to a goalie “impeded him from playing his position.” Now, there’s a guy out there who is genuinely a threat to every goalie’s health in seemingly every game he plays, and we feel like a minor penalty is penance enough for Bennett’s shtick.

Love the player, of course. Don’t love this new wrinkle in his game.

Often, the biggest deciding factor in a Final being contested by two evenly matched teams revolves around who is hurt, and how badly. Case in point: Leon Draisaitl didn’t score a goal in seven games against Florida last spring, finishing the series with three assists — less production than Mattias Janmark, and tied in points with Brett Kulak.

They’re not lying when they say everyone is nursing something at this time of year. But they’re wouldn’t be lying, either, if they admitted that — given a choice — they can think of about 12 Oilers they’d rather lose to injury than Zach Hyman.

Only time can help smoke out which players are faking good health, and having played three extra periods over the first two games will only exacerbate that.

Things We (Think We) Know

In this series, it appears the most vital combination of injury and importance to team — again, other than Hyman, who is done — is Matthew Tkachuk. As Game 2 wore on, and Tkachuk was forced to fire up that wonky groin after a third and fourth intermission break, he looked slower and slower.

It’s not the same for everyone, but players have told me that preparing an injury for play gets more difficult as every game wears on. Overtime is Tkachuk’s enemy, and perhaps for Sam Reinhart, too.

Panthers coach Paul Maurice told the media on Saturday that key defenceman Aaron Ekblad’s right hand was just fine after being struck with that shot from Darnell Nurse late in the game. But we all know the first casualty of a Cup Final is the truth.

We’ve heard of players demanding the doctor give them another needle when a game goes into extra time, while Ryan O’Reilly’s thing is to strip down between every period for an ice bath. Sergei Zubov and Al Iafrate? They just went for a couple of smokes.

If the Oilers have any key guys in bad shape (the way Evander Kane was last year) we haven’t spotted them yet, though they’re likely there. But this is precisely why the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to pursue.

The minutes on the game sheet, they don’t lie. Nor does the ability to keep up with the healthy guys, and the coach’s waning dependence on a key player. Hockey at this level will out a guy who’s barely hanging on, and at this time of year there are usually more of those guys than you think.

Through two games, this is the most entertaining Stanley Cup Final I have ever borne witness to. It is, by my count, my 18th Final covered in whole or in part, and as you can imagine, a guy sees some stuff over the years. And I’m not talking about the media party.

But I don’t recall ever seeing an assist in a Final game quite like that Connor McDavid sequence on Draisaitl’s goal Friday. And nobody has ever seen a 40-year-old score a game-tying goal with 18 seconds left in a Cup Final game — because it had never happened by a player of any age before Corey Perry did it in Game 2.

Things We (Think We) Know

A 4-3 game, a 5-4 game, two overtimes, multiple leads blown … This, my friends, is how the good Lord intended for hockey to be played.

Remember the 2004 Cup Final between Calgary and Tampa, in which the team that scored first won all seven games? Those were the hook-‘n’-ride days, hockey’s equivalent to ‘70s architecture.

This series somehow has a place for the gritty, old-man games of Brad Marchand and Perry, the subtle, high-end class of a Sasha Barkov, a platform for the game’s most lethal shooter in Draisaitl, while still leaving room for Bennett to bull his way to even more goals than the big German has.

Meanwhile Florida’s systems play is like master class on how to be equal parts bully and positional savant, with every battle augmented by a teammate in the precise spot to capitalize on the loose puck created.

We’ve watched Edmonton for 82 games — and all the seasons before that — and never have we seen them so flummoxed on zone exits, or unable to stave off an opponent’s push as the Oilers were in Period 2 of Game 2.

But here’s a stat for Oilers fan: Over the past two playoff seasons, the Oilers’ record in Games 4-7 is 18-2.