Final month will be test of character for Oilers

Mark Letestu probably won’t be around for it, but he says the last quarter of the Edmonton Oilers’ season will say a lot about the players in the room.

It will be easy to identify the guys who are still in the fight, even though the fight is lost, and those who are simply playing out the string.

And what he saw Thursday night against the Colorado Avalanche gives him reason to believe this team will be swinging until the 82nd game.

“There’s always something to play for,” the veteran centre said after Edmonton survived a thirdperiod scare en route to a 3-2 overtime victory. “I feel like times like this can be really revealing. The guys who still show up for each other, not necessarily the standings but show up and play for each other, can be revealing at times.

“It’s good to see the guys haven’t packed it in. It was a good effort, one through 20, and hopefully it continues that way through the rest of the year.”

Thursday’s display was one we’ve seen too many times this season: Dominant one moment, fragile and uncertain the next.

Nineteen shots in the first period, up by two goals late in the second period, then hanging by a thread until Connor McDavid sealed it in an overtime that never should have happened.

“It seems like it’s happened too much to us this year where we’re up and down,” said Leon Draisaitl, who had a goal and an assist in 23:27 of ice time. “We look like a playoff team one period and the next period we come out and we’re not as consistent. But I thought we stuck with it. We could have ended it in regulation.”

“Why the inconsistency?” is a question they’ve been asked, and have been asking themselves, all season. It’s something they’ll still be wondering about when the early

summer starts.

“If we knew, we would try and fix it,” said Draisaitl. “Which doesn’t mean that we’re not trying to fix it, but it’s frustrating because it seems like it’s been like that all year.”

The Oilers admit they had extra motivation in this one. After losing 3-2 to Boston despite leading 2-0 in the third period, nobody wanted to face the embarrassment of having it happen two games in a row.

To their credit, they didn’t. There was no quit when it looked like the wheels were falling off again.

“You look at what happened in the last game against Boston, we were up 2-0 going into the third and let that one slide,” said McDavid. “We were up by two again today and gave up a late one in the second and early in the third. We can’t let those ones get away.”

Added Draisaitl: “You try and fight against (the memories of Boston). You don’t want to fall back into that same thing. Just clear your head, clear your mind and focus on the next shift.”

Letestu is right, they did a nice job pulling it out of the fire, but the head coach really wishes they hadn’t put it there in the first place.

“The stretch at the end of the second was a little bit self-inflicted, we got caught out there a little bit long and couldn’t defend well,” Todd McLellan said. “At the beginning of the third was a lucky bounce that can happen at any point in the game. The one at the end of the second is one that we have to learn as a team that we can prevent and one that we shouldn’t have to earn back.”