NHL Finals: Oilers drill Canes to force Game 7

EDMONTON, Alberta — Peter Laviolette did not sound like a coach with any answers on Saturday night. After watching his Carolina Hurricanes squander a second straight chance to clinch the Stanley Cup, Laviolette seemed a little dazed and confused after the complete domination the Oilers displayed in their 4-0 win in Game 6.

"The safest area in the building was that red pipe at the opposite end," Laviolette said, referring to goal cage occupied by an underworked Jussi Markkanen (just 16 saves in a shutout).

They do not die easily, these Oilers. They have gone from a loss away from elimination — twice — to being all even at 3-3 with the Hurricanes. They stand on the verge of NHL history, and no one should be shocked.

By forcing a deciding seventh game on Monday night in Raleigh, the Oilers may become only the second team to recover from a 3-1 deficit to win the Final. The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs actually came back from 3-0 to defeat Detroit, but should the Oilers rally from 3-1, they would be the first in the modern era. And as the first No. 8 seed to reach the Finals, it would be a fitting finale to this first playoff of the salary-cap era if the Oilers were the team to beat the odds.

For an unprecedented third straight time, the Cup will be up for grabs in a Game 7. The Devils in 2003 and Tampa Bay in 2004 went to seventh games and won on home ice.

"What are the options really?" Laviolette said. "There's one game left for the Stanley Cup, and it's in our building. There's no place we would rather be."

But Laviolette may be out of aces to pull from his sleeve after trying to trump the Oilers with the surprise return of power forward Erik Cole both to offset the loss of Doug Weight (who suffered a separated shoulder in Game 5) and to provide an offensive and emotional boost to a Hurricanes team that suddenly looks very old, very tired, and very ready to quit.

It speaks volumes that Cole was one of Carolina's best players. Unable to play since he suffered a fractured vertebra in his neck in a game against Pittsburgh on March 4, Cole had been practicing with the Hurricanes and had been ruled out of the playoffs, but Laviolette said medical tests over the past few days suggested that "the healing process has probably gone as far as it's going to go."

"[The decision] was in my court, even after warm-ups," said Cole, who took and gave solid hits. "The risk is going to be with me the rest of my life. I didn't have it in mind that I was going to come in and be any kind of savior."

Carolina's once-reliable penalty kill, which had limited the Oilers to just two goals in 33 chances in the first five games of the series, yielded three power-play goals Saturday night as the frustrated Canes took one bad penalty after another against the faster and more physical Oilers. The Hurricanes were outshot 34-16 for the game.

"I thought the start was going to be huge for us," said Raffi Torres, the human bowling ball of a winger who kicked things off on the opening shift with a collision with Carolina's Mike Commodore and never stopped hitting anyone in a white jersey.

After a scoreless first period, Fernando Pisani — the short-handed overtime hero of Game 5 — scored what would prove to be Edmonton's winning goal just 1:45 into the second, on a turnaround backhander that ticked off the skate of Carolina defenseman Glen Wesley and eluded goalie Cam Ward.

Torres, Ryan Smyth and Shawn Horcoff also scored for the Oilers, who have gone from being written off to being the team that now seems to have the momentum heading into Game 7, even thought it will be played in the Hurricanes' rink.

"We'll make the most of it and we'll do our best to put our names on the Cup," Smyth said.

As the horn sounded, someone tossed a piece of Alberta red meat onto the ice — a new playoff tradition in Edmonton that was borrowed from octopus-tossing fans of Detroit. The scoreboard flashed an endearing message as the fans filed out of the season's final game in Edmonton:

"Bring It Home."