Stars-Oilers feels like a toss-up after Dallas surrenders its road mystique in Game 4 loss

Wayne Gretzky was less than a decade removed from winning four Stanley Cups in Edmonton, so when he took the ice for a puck drop before a Stars-Oilers playoff game at Edmonton Coliseum in the late ‘90s, I watched and listened as delirium ensued.

It’s a bit quieter a generation later when The Great One speaks on the TNT studio broadcast, but when a man has 894 goals and 2,857 points to his credit, you might as well listen. And he didn’t exactly speak to fire up his old Oilers team Wednesday night.

”I think the Stars are gonna sit back in the locker room and say, ‘We don’t want to come back to Edmonton, we win tonight and we take this thing home.’ They’re going to come out hard in the first period,’’ Gretzky said.

Just 5 1/2 minutes into the first period of Game 4, Dallas had grabbed a 2-0 lead. The NHL’s best road team, one that had no trouble limiting high-scoring Colorado to one goal in each of the three games played in Denver the last round, was riding high.

Now The Great One did not have much to say regarding what might come later. And at the end of two periods, the Oilers had outshot Dallas 24-14, held a 4-2 advantage, sent two Stars down the tunnel in the second period — forward Mason Marchment (puck to the face) and defenseman Chris Tanev (puck to the unpadded leg) — and taken charge of Game 4. The Period of the Long Change had become the Period of the Long Series.

Marchment returned for the third period but Tanev, the trade deadline acquisition hailed by many as the best in the league who was so instrumental in keeping Jack Eichel and Nathan MacKinnon from killing this team the first two rounds, did not. As a result, Dallas lost a 5-2 game that included a late empty-netter. The Oilers were the first playoff team to score five unanswered goals on Dallas since Vegas won the Western Conference finals clincher 6-0 in Dallas last May.

Although the series will be tied at 2-2 when the puck drops Friday at the AAC — same as it was for Game 5 against Vegas about a month ago — this has to be a worrisome turn of events. As is so often the case in the Stanley Cup playoffs, all the things we thought we had learned from two straight Dallas wins pretty much got upended at Rogers Place on Wednesday.

Like the Oilers can’t score on the power play. Who cares? Neither can Dallas. And Edmonton took the lead in the middle of the second period on the series’ first special teams goal, a short-handed swipe by former Stars forward Mattias Janmark. When Leon Draisaitl knocked in his 10th goal of the playoffs just 51 seconds later, the Oilers had turned Dallas’ two-goal lead on its head and carried the 4-2 advantage into the final period.

Or like Dallas’ road mystique will carry the club. Suddenly a 6-1 record away from the AAC is a 6-2 record that doesn’t scare anybody in Edmonton.

On this night there was no pushback from the Stars. In Game 3, the Stars had erupted from a 2-0 deficit to strike three times in a span of 3:33 to gain control of the game. In Game 4 … a lot of nothing. Not even any great chances to speak of. Heck, the biggest save of the night was made by Jake Oettinger’s stick after he had completely lost it and it deflected a Connor McDavid shot deep in the crease.

In two nights in Edmonton, the Oilers scored eight goals without a drop from the league’s finest power play. They won Game 1 in Dallas without a power play goal. Although the regular season numbers favor Dallas, we know Edmonton got off to a terrible start the first 20 games before recording the most points in the last three-fourths of the season. The sense that Dallas has the edge in goal with Oettinger over Stuart Skinner still hangs in the air … but it hasn’t always meant much in these Western Conference finals and was completely irrelevant Wednesday.

What comes next? Jason Robertson broke out with a hat trick in Game 3 but Dallas’ top line of Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin and Robo fired blanks Wednesday night. Nothing has been easy or quick for the Stars, taking seven games to knock off the Golden Knights and another six to vanquish Colorado. This one will go at least six and the dead-even nature of the series suggests the team that’s down after Game 5 will find a way to push on to Game 7.

Maybe then the Stars can ride Pete DeBoer’s 8-0 record in seventh games one more time to reach the Cup Final. History isn’t always the best card to play, but when your scoring and power play are inconsistent and your defense has just taken another hit, you hang onto any cards at your disposal.

On X/Twitter: @TimCowlishaw

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