saves while stopping 42 of the 46 shots he faced. His teammates provided the necessary goal support.

Along with Marchand, Sam Bennett scored his postseason-leading 13th goal and NHL record 12th on the road. Seth Jones scored into a wide-open net after some spectacular tic-tac-toe passing, and fellow defenseman Dmitry Kulikov tied it with a shot through traffic that Stuart Skinner almost certainly did not see.

Kulikov’s goal came after Florida controlled play for several minutes in the second, hemming Edmonton in its zone shift after shift and piling up a 34-13 advantage in shot attempts during the period. Marchand’s OT goal was his 10th career goal in the final to lead all active players.

Game 3 is Monday night as the teams traverse the continent and play shifts to Sunrise.

The Panthers wrested home-ice advantage away from the Oilers by splitting the first two, rebounding from a Game 1 overtime loss and asserting they won’t go quietly against Draisaitl and Connor McDavid looking like they’ll do everything in their power to hoist the Cup for the first time.

Of course, those stars had their moments. They assisted on Evan Bouchard’s goal when coach Kris Knoblauch put them on the ice together, and McDavid stickhandled through multiple defenders in highlight-reel fashion to set up Draisaitl scoring on the power play.

There were a lot of those — 10 in total — after officials whistled 14 penalties, including three in the first four minutes. Each team had a few calls it was not happy with, though most of that evened out over the course of the game.

Stars fire DeBoer as coach after 3 seasons

Dallas Stars coach Pete DeBoer was fired Friday after three seasons with the team, getting to the Western Conference final each time but never advancing past that for a shot at the Stanley Cup.

The move came eight days after the Stars ended their season in a 6-3 loss at home to Edmonton in Game 5 of the West final.

DeBoer made the curious and much-discussed decision to bench Jake Oettinger after his star goalie gave up two goals on two shots in the first 7:09. Two days later, the coach acknowledged he still hadn’t talked to Oettinger about that decision.

General manager Jim Nill said he had no problem with DeBoer’s decision to pull Oettinger, or that the two didn’t talk in the immediate aftermath of such a big decision.

Nill and his now-former coach agreed that DeBoer could have handled postgame comments better. DeBoer pointed out after the season-ending loss that his goalie had lost six of his past seven starts against the Oilers going into the game.

Amid reports that some players expressed concerns about DeBoer in their exit interviews, Nill said the input from players and the fallout from the Oettinger move were not the only factors in the decision.