Win the little battles and Oilers might win the war
‘Desperation’ hockey will go a long way in helping Edmonton knock off the Ducks
It has long been said the Stanley Cup is the toughest trophy in sports to win because it is such a gruelling marathon.
That may be true.
But to enter the marathon, to get past the Anaheim Ducks in the best-of-three series that opened here Friday, there was a case to be made that to do it, the Edmonton Oilers would have to win the sprints.
The little races to the puck. The little battles.
When the No. 1 faceoff team in the league is going against the No. 30 faceoff team and both are running to form, the winning of those little battles has proved to be imperative.
When they’ve done it, the Oilers have succeeded in these playoffs. They did it for a serious stretch in the second period of Game 3 and dominated. They did it in the first period of Game 4 and had a 2-0 lead that deserved to be 3-0.
Game 5 here Friday night wasn’t an elimination game with the series tied 2-2 (and the Ducks having a strange record of having lost all six Game 5s in series that were tied 2-2 and coming back to win two of them in Game 7). But when you get deep in a series, the will to win often turns out to be the difference. And that shows itself in those little battles and little races to the pucks.
“We have to do it more, we have to do it longer and we have to do it harder,” said Oilers coach Todd McLellan.
“We have to stay consistent doing it. We’ve been up and down in this series. We had some real good periods of that strong play and there have been other periods when we haven’t been consistent enough.”
“Yeah, for sure,” said Oilers captain Connor McDavid.
“Both teams are so close that it really comes down to the battle side of it and who executes better, the little things that everyone kind of talks about.”
Some of the little races are the ones when you dump the puck in.
“Whenever you have the puck, obviously, they don’t. So that’s a good way to defend them, I guess,” said McDavid.
Of course, to win those little battles and little races you need all the racers to be battling. Remarkably, the Oilers got to Game 11 of their first playoffs in 11 years without the 666 Line of Ryan-Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Milan Lucic firing. The three $6-million players have been mostly missing in action.
Eberle and Nugent-Hopkins went into Game 5 without having scored a goal in their first playoff appearances and Lucic had a pair on the power play.
It was suggested to Lucic that when it gets down to winning the elimination games, the Oilers weren’t likely to get to the next round without his line producing.
“One hundred per cent,” said the one Stanley Cup champion in the room.
“It wasn’t nearly good enough in the first 10 games of the playoffs. We were unable to generate a fiveon-five goal between the three of us. The one five-on-five goal we scored was off a rush where Oscar Klefbom threw it off the net and it went off the San Jose defender and in. We have to find a way to chip in and find a way to contribute five-on-five.
“That’s a challenge for us in the best of three moving forward, is finding a way to contribute and step up if we want to move on.”
Win those little battles and races and it’ll help it all work out.
“It’s a method to our success,” said Lucic.
“Being on our toes and being first on the puck. And it’s not just the first guy. It’s the support guys, the second guy and the third guy of getting in there and winning those races. That’s been a part of our success all season long.
“This is determination moment and desperation moment right now and whether we want to continue this run or start our off-season.”