SUNRISE, Fla. — Sometimes, at a time like this, you should just try to step back, blink your eyes and clear your head.

Look down on this Stanley Cup Final from the proverbial 30,000 feet, gazing at the team you’ve been cheering for all these years, and try to put it all into some kind perspective.

And if you can manage all of that here in the spring of 2025 — with the Edmonton Oilers having tied those irascible Florida Panthers at 2-2 after another hair-raising comeback capped by a Leon Draisaitl overtime goal Thursday — the conclusion you’ll arrive at will likely not differ much from the following:

“It’s the craziest hockey I’ve ever played in,” said Oilers defenceman Jake Walman. “And I feel like, in front of our fans, it would even ramp up a little bit more. I’m so excited to get back home.”

On a Thursday night in Sunrise, how close were the Oilers to having the sun set on a second Stanley Cup journey against Florida?

One more goal against in the opening-period debacle? One more crazy dumb high-sticking penalty?

Edmonton couldn’t play any worse in the opening 20 minutes, and couldn’t have dug a hole much deeper than the 3-0 deficit the Oilers helped Florida build with three minor penalties — including a lengthy five-on-three on which Matthew Tkachuk scored.

“We wanted to come out strong tonight,” Draisaitl said. “But they put us on our heels early, and we were kind of lollygagging around a little bit. Certainly not the time to be lollygagging around, right? Especially after getting spanked in Game 3.”

“Our team didn’t get many opportunities,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said of a first period where the shots favoured the Panthers 17-7. “Again, taking three penalties in the first period. Two (for) high-sticking, which I’m hating.”

In this series however, with these teams, was anybody changing the channel?

Can you ever change the change the channel on these Oilers? No matter how perplexing that first period was, with a Stanley Cup on the line and a team that “lollygagged” out of the dressing room for Period 1?

Knoblauch yanked goalie Stu Skinner — likely Edmonton’s best player in Period 1 — between periods, and that was perhaps not the most important decision made during that intermission.

Corey Perry, the eldest Oiler but just one of the many veterans stocking the National Hockey League’s oldest roster, decided it was his turn to lead. And for those folks out there who scoff at the arrival of any player deemed to be “good in the room,” well, have a listen to what the boys had to say about that first intermission, and the role Perry played.

“When he speaks up, you listen,” Draisaitl said. “And you do what he says.”

“What I noticed just what a bunch of leaders we have in our room,” began Walman, whose clutch go-ahead goal late in the third was 19.5 seconds away from standing up. “We came in, Perrs gave us a little speech, a couple other guys spoke up. The kind of the quiet confidence that we have in our room, even down 3-0, to turn that game around…

“I don’t think we’re ever out of a game.”

“Just get to work. That was the message,” said Darnell Nurse, an assistant captain who knows when to step aside and let someone else lead the way — letter or no. “The tone might have been a little different, but …  he came and brought that message.

“The desperation of the playoffs is high,” Nurse said. “The desperation in the Stanley Cup Finals is another level. We needed to bring our desperation up tonight, obviously, in the second period. And we found a way to do that.”

Hockey people, at a moment like that, all think the same way.

“Just score the next goal, and we’ll have a chance,” was the theme to open Period 2, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins picked a corner on the power play to fulfil that, solving Sergei Bobrovsky and getting Edmonton on the board.

Then Nurse picked a spot over Bob’s shoulder from a not-so-great angle, and it was a ballgame again. Next, a confident Nurse circled the Florida net with the puck, guided it into the trouble zone, and fourth-liner Vasily Podkolzin slammed it home.

After Walman and Sam Reinhart scored, it was off to overtime, where Pickard made a monumental stop on Sam Bennett — off his glove and off the crossbar — to preserve the series, really.

As the play unfolded — a lovely saucer pass to Bennett, the playoff leader with 14 goals teeing up a wide open one-timer from the slot — we’d bet the crowd at the Moss Pit fell deadly silent.

“I kind of read it pretty well,” Pickard explained. “Then I looked in my glove and it wasn’t in there. I kind of heard the crowd, like, oohing and ahhing. It was a good bounce, and then we got one.”

Who else but Draisaitl, who one-handed a pass towards Perry, the orator who didn’t have a point on the night, but came up with two giant assists between his speech and the decoy he played on the winner. The puck hit a sliding Niko Mikkola and got past Bobrovsky, a 5-4 win and an absolute thriller.

It was Draisaitl’s fourth OT winner this spring, a new NHL record. He broke a tie with Maurice Richard and three others to stand alone in having perhaps the most clutch NHL post-season ever recorded.

“He’s as clutch as it gets,” Pickard said of Draisaitl. “Obviously it was a game of bounces. They got one at the end of the third there, and then we got the last one. He’s been playing great, always scores big goals at big times and we’re going home with the momentum.”

When this series began, the Panthers had an ungodly 31-0 record in the playoffs when leading after the first or second period. They were money when they got ahead of you.

Well, four games into this classic rematch, Edmonton has erased three leads and won twice in overtime — both by Draisaitl.

You can’t count ’em out, these Oilers, and now they come home to a Saturday night game in June, a best-of-three with the Stanley Cup on the line.

We’re not sure it gets any better than this.