SHARK BITE
Getting past San Jose isn’t going to be easy
One game is a small sample size.
But Game 1 was a failing, and in some cases flailing, evaluation on several individuals.
Fans aren’t likely to be all the conscious of it during the excruciating and ecstatic ebbs and flow of a Stanley Cup playoff game, but to the Edmonton Oilers’ brain trust, it will be more than Game 2 against the San Jose Sharks, it will be Test 2.
“For our group, this is a great opportunity to evaluate our team,” coach Todd McLellan said as the series opened.
“We haven’t had a chance to do this as an organization for a decade, so this is brand new.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to play in it. We’re excited about the opportunity to evaluate. We know we still have to grow and make changes as we move forward. This is a great viewing opportunity for all of us to see how our team will react and see how our individuals will play.”
If you hadn’t watched them all year, you’d swear the playoff version of the Oilers looked as fragile as Drake Caggiula’s hockey stick.
There they were, in the first Oilers playoff game in 3,952 days, riding the wave of an Edmonton crowd that picked up right where they left off in 2006 when Caggiula stepped out of the penalty box and skated in on a breakaway that could have put the Oilers up 3-1 only to have his stick snap.
After that, several members of the Oilers under evaluation seemed to lose their confidence and composure and come completely unravelled. The evaluation game may either have them in the press box or very much on a hot seat if they want to be part of the brilliant future for this group going forward.
“I don’t know if it was a particular play and we thought ‘Oh no, we’re cursed. Having Drake’s stick break like that was just an unfortunate event. I don’t think our play before that was particularly good,” said Mark Letestu.
“I thought things started to turn even before that,” said Jordan Eberle.
“We played a good first period, then in the second period, we just tried to do too much. Guys were trying to do more and were staying out there longer. The good thing is that they were all things we can fix.
“We went over why the game turned, and it’s pretty simple. We got caught a lot with long shifts and just didn’t have any energy. You get a guy like Brent Burns spending 10 minutes on the power play, it’s not going to help your cause.”
Nobody was biting on the idea that they’d turned into a fragile team in their very first playoff game.
When your correspondent tossed that out to coach McLellan, he said: “I wouldn’t use that term in this case.”
“We looked like a team that was a little bit on our toes early and then on our heels later,” McLellan said.
“I think fragile comes into it when teams get a little bit afraid to lose. We have nothing to lose. We’re just going to go play and play hard. The experience questions that have come up about our team? We now have it. We have one game of experience and we learned a lesson. Good teams learn lessons and become a better team the next night.”
Outshot 34-9 after a 10-10 opening period, the Oilers team that finished the season with 12 wins in their final 14 games came completely unglued and lost a game they led 2-0 by a score of 3-2 in overtime.
A lot happened in there to a lot of players.
Some of the players took stupid stick penalties in the offensive zone. Some lost composure and couldn’t clear the puck out of their own zone.
Others disappeared with the intense checking of the experienced, playoff-savvy Sharks.
Caggiula, David Desharnais, Kris Russell, Eric Gryba, Darnell Nurse and even Patrick Maroon were among the more obvious of the failers.
“Don’t take that evaluation thing short-term, it’s long-term” McLellan said. “We’re going to watch the series and the playoffs play out and make decisions on our roster moving forward as we try to build toward building a championship.
“The playoffs are a little bit of a different animal. You have to look and watch your team closely and see how they respond to different situations — tighter checking and the emotional part of the game. And we’re doing that.”
The bottom line is the more playoff games they play, the greater the sample size and the further along they will be in the evaluation process. That’s the game within every game as the Oilers’ ‘Orange Crush era’ begins.
We played a good first period, then in the second period, we just tried to do too much.