It’s actually taken to days for my heart-rate to get back to its standard (unhealthy) beat. Blood pressure? I think we’re on the right track because it doesn’t feel like my chest is about to explode anymore. The overtime match probably took a couple years off my life expectancy. It really didn’t help that the Oilers appeared to be in complete control during the OT period.
Edmonton played a solid game as a whole. It wasn’t without mistakes, but they maintained possession for long stretches at a time. As they have been all year, Edmonton is a tough club to handle when they’re behind in the game. It was relatively unlucky with goal posts and bad choices to fall down 3-1. After that point, though, the Oil really put the pedal to the metal and owned the game.
Regardless of how close the final outcome was, it was a very good bounce-back from the 7-0 drubbing they took in San Jose. The Oilers won the faceoff matchups (59%) which makes hockey people feel better more than it helps win games. They out-hit them 33-20. They out-shot the Sharks 48-30 including 14-2 during OT. The out-attempted the Sharks 95-54 while playing 5v5. It was as dominant a performance as you can possibly get in a 4-3 OT game.
Tonight the Edmonton Oilers have an opportunity to close the deal. They have a chance to punch their ticket to the 2nd round by winning this series. Anaheim is waiting, but the Sharks are at home and will fight like hell. Conventional hockey wisdom is very clear. This will be the hardest game to win in the series. And, it stands to reason that the Sharks will be more motivated than ever to win again at home.
The same set of circumstances that supercharged DeBoer’s club in game 4 are present tonight in game 6. The only difference is that everything is multiplied by the fact that the Sharks have their backs against the wall. There is nothing left to do for the cornered animal except to try to fight its way out. The veteran players like Thornton, Marleau, Couture, Pavelski, and Burns aren’t likely to disappear at puck drop. Edmonton’s club was handed a lesson about what that looks like. Tonight they get to take the test.
If we can take a step back for a minute, the Oilers (for a lot of people) were not supposed to be in this position this season. The team finished in 29th place a year ago. The expectation was that a healthy Oilers would be a lot better, but still struggle to even get close to the playoffs. This was a young team that needed to “learn how to win.… They should have gotten closer to the goal of making the playoffs incrementally. They should have gotten close but failed. The next year they should have made the post-season and pushed for a 1st round win. And then, and only then, should they be ready to compete for a Stanley Cup.
That’s a wonderful tale. It fits everything that makes people feel comfortable but it’s an ideal narrative, not a real narrative. The Oilers have an opportunity to do something extremely interesting because what’s already happened this season. They’ve already outperformed standard expectations. Should they close out this series against the Sharks then they’ve skipped whole steps in the ideal narrative. It probably shouldn’t surprise people that the team with the best player in the world is performing well, but it does anyway.
The NHL is not a league where giants still exist and the haves crush the have nots in perpetuity. The Blackhawks were just swept by the Predators. The Wild are being undone by a hot goaltender. The Capitals are in a dog fight against the Maple Leafs. It is entirely conceivable that the Oilers can do more than win a series this season. It’s also entirely possible that the Sharks come back and win the next two games.
The league is wide open. The stories we tell ourselves about how things should work in a perfect world don’t hold true anymore because the NHL works differently than it did when these stories were in their infancy.
LINEUP
Unlikely to change now.
Caggiula McDavid Draisaitl Lucic RNH Eberle Maroon Letestu Kassian Pouliot Desharnais Slepyshev
Klefbom Larsson Sekera Russell Nurse Benning
Talbot Brossoit
OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME
1) Weathering The Storm. I fully expect the San Jose Sharks to start the game like they’ve been shot out of a cannon. It’s imperative for the Oilers to manage well. There’s a tendency for the skill lines to try break out patterns that involve shoveling the puck to the middle of the ice on cutesie plays at the blueline. The Sharks are going to eat them alive if they keep doing that. Edmonton’s defense really did a good job the other day of skating with the puck to open more exit options than along the walls. That’s the key to withstanding an initial onslaught by San Jose. The Oiler defense has to make plays with the puck deep in their zone. Should Larsson, Russell, or Benning (in particular) start treating the puck like a grenade then it’s going to be a rough first period.
2) Killer Instinct. Knowing full well that the Sharks will fight like hell in this game, the Oil need to tap into that killer instinct and finish the series off. This is the first elimination game the majority of Edmonton's players have been in. Edmonton’s top players were significantly better in game 5 than they had been all series and it’s they who need to lead again. The team needs Connor McDavid at his best, something I don’t think we’ve seen yet. They need Lucic to be the physically dominant player he’s shown in flashes. They need Draisaitl to follow up a breakout game with sustained effectiveness. Most importantly, they need to put the hammer down on a team that is desperate. McLellan’s club needs to be aware that the other side is at the point of the fight where all they have left are haymakers and the club needs to know how to counter that. They need to be ready to end this.
3) Matchups Disrupted. In the last two home games, Todd McLellan has found a way to get Ryan Nugent-Hopkins out against Pavelski a lot. In the last game Nuge saw Pavelski for 12:36 5v5. On the road, that’s been a lot harder to do. In San Jose the most RNH has played against Little Joe in a game has been 5:31 5v5 this spring. DeBoer will do his best to keep his top line against the checking trio of Lucic-RNH-Eberle, which has handled that top unit very well. At the same time, Vlasic will see more time against McDavid as ever. Edmonton’s bench boss has his work cut out for him to disrupt DeBoer’s preferred matchups. Some early offense by Edmonton alleviates pressure in that regard, but the reality is that Edmonton’s most successful games have been the ones in which Nuge’s line saws off the legs of the Sharks best players. It’s been an under-appreciated part of this series, and at home the Sharks have thus far prevented it from impacting them like it has on the road.
Puck drops tonight at 8:30 PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet. Game On! Follow me on Twitter @Archaeologuy