KASSIAN HITTING PEAK PISANI WITH RECENT STRING OF PLAY
Unlikely Oilers hero has been pumping out game-winning goals like surprise 2006 star
It’s been a long time since Fernando Pisani was a Stanley Cup playoff hero. But the great thing about having once been one is that you keep getting reborn when the next one comes along.
Only three games into the 2017 playoff season, the next one appears to have come along.
Zack Kassian is the first Edmonton Oilers player to score a game-winning goal in consecutive games since Pisani did it the last time the team was in the post-season — in the 2006 Stanley Cup final series against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Despite a modest 18-goal, 37-point season as a role player in the regular season, Pisani scored 14 goals — five of which were game-winners — in 24 playoff games.
Until Pisani came along, Chris Kontos — who produced two goals in the regular season and fired nine goals in the playoffs for the Los Angeles Kings in 11 playoff games in 1989, including a hat trick in Game 2 of the first-round series against Edmonton — was the poster boy for unlikely heroes.
“It’s been great,” said Pisani, the Edmonton product who teaches at the St. Albert Hockey Academy and works as a skill development coach with the Edmonton Oil Kings.
“It’s fun to see how excited the city gets. It’s been a long time coming. As a player in 2006, I didn’t really get to see the scope of it and how wild and crazy it got. When you’re playing, you kind of try and shelter yourself from it.
“Now being a fan, you get to see how fun and how great of a time it is.
“Kassian has been a horse for them this last couple of games. He’s been very physical.
“It seems that every year, there’s someone who scores and has this happen to them. In the playoffs, the secondary scoring is something you really need to have to go far in the playoffs.”
Oilers coach Todd McLellan has been saying it all year. In the playoffs, the top two lines tend to cancel each other out and it’s the third and fourth lines that decide hockey games.
“The nice thing about when the playoffs start is that it’s just a clean slate and for me, it was timing,” said Pisani. “Everything clicked with my linemates Raffi Torres and Michael Peca. Everything I seemed to shoot was going in.
“As a player, a lot of it is confidence and once you get that confidence, you just ride it. It was just an amazing ride. It wasn’t just myself. There were a lot of guys who stepped up. Chris Pronger was amazing. Dwayne Roloson was amazing. There were a lot of contributing factors. Obviously goaltending is a huge thing.”
So far, the part of Roloson is definitely being played by Cam Talbot.
It’s interesting that Kassian scored seven goals during the regular season and Talbot notched seven shutouts. Kassian scored back-to-back game-winning goals and Talbot recorded back-to-back shutouts in these playoffs so far.
Other than playing in Chicago in 2010-11, Pisani has lived in Edmonton since his Stanley Cup playoff hero year.
And it’s been cool being Fernando Pisani again, if you will.
“The Oilers have brought in guys from that run that I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said of the 2006 group.
“It’s nice to kind of re-live that time, get to reconnect and just get to talk about things that went on throughout that playoff run. You somewhat forget some things that happened.
“It’s been an extra fun time because there has been a lot of comparison from that run to this one. This team has played very well the month leading into the playoffs, kind of the way we played to get into the playoffs.
“It’s been good just walking around and running into people who come up to you, remembering that run that we had.”
Kassian has been a horse for them this last couple of games. He’s been very physical.