2006 hero has praise for Kassian

It’s been a long time since Fernando Pisani was a Stanley Cup playoff hero, but the great thing about having been one is you keep getting reborn when the next one comes along.

Zack Kassian is the first Edmonton Oilers player to score a game-winning goal in consecutive games since Pisani, which was the last time the team was in the post-season. It was the 2006 Stanley Cup final series against the Carolina Hurricanes, which the Oilers lost in seven games.

Despite a modest 18-goal, 37-point season as a role player in the regular season, Pisani scored 14 goals in 24 playoff games — five of which were game-winners.

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 their 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 head coach Todd McLellan has been saying it all season: In the playoffs, the top two lines tend to cancel each other out, and it’s the third and fourth lines that decide games.

“The nice thing about when the playoffs start is that it’s just a clean slate, and for me, it was timing,” Pisani, 40, said. “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.”