We’ve all had those sort of days. You get up in the morning, think, “this is gonna be a great day” and, then, you spill coffee all over yourself as you gun it out of the drive-thru. Your morning is interrupted by a call from the school principal because your kid swore in class. You go for your lunch, but your credit card doesn’t work.
Your very good day has turned into a very bad day.
Now, imagine you are Flames goalie Jacob Markstrom. You’re a candidate for the Vezina Trophy. You’re widely recognized as one of the best goaltenders on the planet. But you’ve been soundly criticized for your play in the first three games of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Your team has fallen behind two games to one to the hated Edmonton Oilers. You have given up 15 goals in three games, and suffered the indignity of being pulled in Game 3.
But in Game 4, things are going to be better. You are going to be the goalie that NHL fans saw in the regular sea… and then, less than a minute in, you misplay a puck, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins fires it into the net to send Rogers Place into a frenzy.
“Stuff like that happens,” RNH says after the game. “Bounces happen. That’s hockey.”
By the end of the first, you’ve given up three goals on nine shots.
You’ve spilled coffee all over yourself. Again.
Your Flames teammates will rally like demons to tie the game, including a bizarre goal on a 100-foot floater from Rasmus Andersson that Oilers goalie Mike Smith admitted that he never picked up.
To get them there, you absolutely rob Leon Draisaitl with the Oilers on a powerplay. Things are getting better. But, you can’t stop Nugent-Hopkins from making it 4-3. And you can only watch helplessly as Evander Kane scores the empty-net insurance goal in a 5-3 win. That’s Kane’s second goal of the game, and he has 12 for the playoffs, The record for goals in a playoff campaign is 19. We are only in round two.
The Oilers lead the series 3-1. And, once again, Jacob Markstrom, you know you’re a storyline — for all the wrong reasons