Oilers get pep-talk from former Stanley Cup champ before Game 4.

The Edmonton Oilers find themselves in the unenviable position of being down 0-3 in the Stanley Cup Final with the Florida Panthers taking a stranglehold on the season's penultimate series, a deficit that few teams have ever come back from before.

There are teams however that have rallied back from 3 games down in a series in the history of the National Hockey League, and on Friday some members of the Oilers locker room received a pep talk from a former multi-time winning Stanley Cup champion that had the rare experience of going through it himself.

Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch confirmed on Monday that the man in question was former 3-time Stanley Cup winner Duncan Keith, who discussed how the Chicago Blackhawks had rallied back after losing the first 3 games against the Vancouver Canucks back in 2011 to force a Game 7. Keith was no doubt hoping to inspire the Oilers and perhaps even give them a little more belief that it was possible to rally back from such a massive deficit despite the odds being stacked against them.

Keith and the Blackhawks did not do it in the Stanley Cup Final however and instead rallied back against the Vancouver Canucks one round earlier during the Western Conference Final. The stakes will be much higher for the Oilers on Saturday with the Stanley Cup itself on the line.

The Blackhawks and Keith would come up short in that series, with former Canucks forward Alex Burrows playing the hero in the overtime of Game 7, but in spite of that it was a heroic effort on the part of the Blackhawks to even mount the kind of comeback that would force overtime in Game 7 scenario after starting the series so poorly.

I believe Keith's words will likely carry significant weight with the Oilers given that he was a Stanley Cup champion prior to that heartbreaking loss against the Canucks but would also go on to capture an additional two Stanley Cups with the Blackhawks after suffering that bitter defeat.

Whether or not his words will inspire the Oilers to mount a comeback of their own in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final remains to be seen.