To most of the hockey world the Edmonton Oilers are Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
If they don’t bounce back from Wednesday’s failure to close Game 3 of the NHL’s best-of-five ‘Play-In’ Stanley Cup qualifying series game while in apparent control, giving up two fluke deflections in the last five minutes to lose 4-3, that image will remain.
Three stars — and an un-supporting cast.
Nobody expected this team to go deep into this tournament without having to prove their character, commitment to each other and mental toughness at some point. It’s just happened sooner rather than later.
The trouble with sooner is it would leave them departing their own bubble and this once-in-a-lifetime situation without anything to show for it, nothing to take away and use in the next few seasons going forward. Some guys who could one day be part of a Stanley Cup parade here would be moving out of more than the J.W. Marriott.
You win a lot of hockey games and lose a lot of hockey games like the one they lost Wednesday night over the course of an 82-game season. They don’t define you.
The Oilers didn’t gag on that game.
They haven’t choked on this series.
This isn’t the Miracle On Manchester.
Anybody who writes Edmonton or Pittsburgh off being down two-games-to-one against 23rd and 24th seeded teams is wearing their COVID-19 masks over their eyes.
But ever since the calendar turned to 2020 there’s been the belief in Edmonton that the Oilers have added enough depth, especially on defence, to consider themselves a contender for the one Stanley Cup season where just about everybody came to Edmonton and Toronto believing anything was possible in the 24-team ‘Return To Play’ tournament.
If the Oilers were forced to check out of Hub City Saturday or Sunday as McDavid, Draisaitl, The Nuge and a bunch of other guys, it would be sad mostly because they’d be taking nothing away from their season. And this wasn’t that kind of a season.
But if the Oilers don’t win Friday afternoon and Saturday evening to advance against likely the Dallas Stars in the traditional opening round best-of-seven series, you know how this series will be scored.
The stats line on this team through three games:
McDavid: Five goals. Two assists. Seven points.
Draisaitl: Three goals. Three assists. Six points.
Nugent-Hopkins: One goal. Six assists. Seven points.
That’s a combined nine goals from Edmonton’s three stars. The rest of the team has scored a combined four goals, one of them by Tyler Ennis who was seriously injured in the 4-3 loss Wednesday.
Not one goal has been scored by an Edmonton defenceman.
The biggest mismatch involved in this series is supposed to involve Chicago’s highly suspect defence but the Blackhawks are generating all sorts of offence from the back and the Oilers rear guards have not surrounded themselves in glory going in either direction.
McDavid’s game analysis was compact and correct.
“We didn’t get off to the start we wanted. I thought we took over the first period after they got one. Then just far too many penalties,” he said.
“There has to be more discipline. The penalty killing did a good job keeping us in the game and then controlling the game. Then three shots from the point ended up in the back of the net.”
No Fernando Pisani has yet to emerge.
And as much as Kailer Yamamoto and Ethan Bear, in particular, showed during the season and appeared to be bringing it to the playoffs, penalties and decision-making haven’t surrounded them with any glory. To this point, they’ve had nowhere near the impact of Fort Saskatchewan rookie Kirby Dach for the Blackhawks.
Edmonton had the No. 2 penalty-killing units in the NHL this year but they’ve had one of the top penalty-taking teams in the playoffs, and most of those penalty-takers have been the penalty-killers themselves.
Despite their parade to the penalty box, the Oilers won Game 2 and looked to have a stranglehold on Game 3 with less than five minutes to play.
To most observers, Edmonton is the better team despite the Stanley Cup-winning experience and leadership of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.
And if this were a best-of-seven series I suspect there wouldn’t be panic that set in just prior to midnight Wednesday.
There’s no lack of examples of what can happen in a short series and when you get into a situation like they now find themselves.
I expected it to be closer to Sept. 1, when we’d be writing something like this. But here we are.
It’s time to see what the 2020 Edmonton Oilers are made of — the ones not named McDavid, Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
