SUNRISE, Fla. — Taylor Swift might never watch football again.
Nah, the hockey world won’t be shaking this one off.
The four overtime periods in four games. The last-minute heroics only to get undone by antiheroes. The monster hits and 10-bellers. The tectonic shifts of momentum as these two heavyweights exchange roundhouse blows.
And the most famous pop star of this era, plus beau Travis Kelce, had a seat Thursday for one of the most dramatic hockey games of this year or any other.
No need for the broadcast to kill time or sell casuals — please like our sport! — by panning in the suites for famous fans at Amerant Bank Arena during the Edmonton Oilers’ tell-the-grandkids 5-4 comeback OT thriller in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Everything one needed to get jacked about unfolded on the ice, in nervy, unpredictable fashion.
“Oh, this is as good as this thing gets. This is Christmas. This is the payoff,” said Paul Maurice, who coached the losing team on this night.
“You want to be a good pro Tuesday on the road on the West Coast in November — not as much fun as you think. But this is where you get the payback. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not light. From about a day and a half, you can feel the game coming, and you feel it all day. And it’s exciting. But this is truly the juice that you live for.”
Us hockey fans, we’re chugging that juice like frat boys do draught or future frat boys do Prime.
So, building on their Game 3 beatdown, which built upon their own Game 2 extra-time comeback, the Panthers ripped 17 shots in Period 1 and stormed out to a 3-0 lead.
Then Corey Perry gave a Hollywood speech we can only hope some embedded camera caught, and the Oil responded with their own 17-shot, three-goal period in the second.
Jake Walman was poised to be the hero when he blasted the twine with under seven minutes to go, but — goalie pulled — Sam Reinhart tied the thing with 20 seconds left.
The only later goal to force an overtime in Cup Final history? Well, that would belong to Perry, with 18 seconds left, six nights and about 29 did-you-just-see-that?’s ago.
On both occasions, the final-minute tying goals gave sudden life to a home crowd that would only be let down by a rush goal in sudden death.
All this after brilliant, cross-crease saves. A potential winning puck that tips off goalie Calvin Pickard’s glove, then cracks a bar. Crushing hits. Smoking-hot power-plays. And a zillion heated puck battles, each one contested over like the last slice.
“Games like that… it’s exhausting,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “It’s a roller coaster. But I do appreciate the level of hockey, the two good teams playing as hard as they are, playing the right way. I do appreciate being so close to the action and seeing what I’m seeing.
“But with what’s on the line, it’s stressful. But it is fun. And I think our guys are having fun, enjoying this moment.”
The way one might “enjoy” running into a burning building and rescuing the family pet. Every other night.
“Fatigue kicks in at some point, but your adrenaline usually takes over and you just chip away at it, chip away at it,” says Draisaitl, who was both good and lucky on his overtime winner.
The Oilers became the first road team in a Cup Final to rally from a three-goal deficit and win since the Montreal Canadiens did the same, against the Seattle Metropolitans, in 1919.
Thirty-two goals have been scored in four games. And yet?
“Both goalies have been unreal,” Matthew Tkachuk says. “It’s a good series. Special teams — both teams’ power play seemed to be clicking tonight. The result at the end sucks, it does. But what are you going to do?”
What we are most definitely going to do is tune in Saturday, maybe with a bag of popcorn, and probably on a seat we’ll barely use.
“I think we focus on sometimes the mistakes that get made by good players at times, and you miss the heart and soul, the intensity of it. It’s so fast,” Maurice says.
“Every board battle, everything can turn into something. So, there’s a tension, because both teams can score.
“Just everything is dangerous all the time. So, there’s a mental intensity, mental toughness both teams show. The game’s not going to be over till it is. You get three of four games in a final into overtime. You’ve got two really good, evenly matched teams.”
Best of all, you get two or three more of these beauties.
Because we are in danger of witnessing one of the greatest Stanley Cup Finals of all time.
• Perry — who is at risk of being a Stanley Cup runner-up for the fifth time in six seasons — addressed his teammates in the first intermission, down 3-zip.
“When he speaks up, you listen and you do what he says,” Draisaitl explains of the series’ eldest player.
“He’s not a guy that speaks up or yells at guys all the time. That’s not his character. So, when a guy like that, with that many games, that much experience — he’s won everything there is to win; he knows how to win — when he speaks up, you listen. And it grabs your attention. So, yeah, he’s a heckuva leader.”
• Draisaitl’s fourth overtime winner gives him more than anyone in a single postseason.
“He’s as clutch as it gets,” Calvin Pickard says.
• Tkachuk got the Panthers on the board early with a pair of power-play goals, came within a Mattias Ekholm block of a gaping net of ripping a hat trick, then assisted on Reinhart’s overtime-forcing strike with 20 seconds left in regulation.
“He’s back to form now,” Maurice says.
• Despite the Oilers preaching discipline, Evander Kane has committed five stick penalties in the past three games. Knoblauch dropped the winger out of the top six midgame as a result.
Meanwhile, defenceman Troy Stetcher’s soft play on Anton Lundell’s goal got him stapled to the bench for all but one 14-second shift early in Period 2.
The Oilers used only five D-men during their comeback.
• Jeff Skinner tucked Dmitry Kulikov’s stick under his armpit for a ridiculous amount of time, then playfully patted the defenceman on the back after Darnell Nurse sniped to continue the second-period comeback.
