‘MORE OF A HUNGER LEVEL’
Oilers talk about intensity: Jones
Two things.
“Who are we?” asked Todd McLellan.
“And who are you?”
The Edmonton Oilers head coach gathered his team together after medicals prior to Friday’s first on-ice day of training camp and delivered those two questions to his relatively unchanged group that failed so spectacularly last season.
As camps open around the league, everybody is 0-0 and optimism reigns supreme as always. But I double dog dare you to find a group more focused than Connor McDavid and the team that went from being a win away from the Western Conference final two years earlier to out of contention by Grey Cup Sunday last year.
“Who are we? Who do we want to be? And how do we get there? And who are you as an individual, even if you had a great year? What are you bringing to the table?” said McLellan.
“Last year at this time we had grave concerns about our approach to the season with expectations being high coming off a real good year and this year it feels different.
“Last year we ended up where we didn’t want to be and it was a stinging feeling that’s still in all of us.
“I feel like there’s a more astute group around the rink with a little more intensity. You can feel it in the air.”
Will the Oilers staff be able to see it in the first day of camp Friday? Will the fans be able to see it on the free open house at camp in Rogers Place on Saturday?
“The commitment is as high as I’ve ever seen it,” said McDavid when asked for his take on the temperature of the team.
“In talking to guys over the summer and seeing how guys are coming into camp and the week or two leading up to camp, you can really feel it with the group.
“You can tell how motivated we are, how motivated everybody is to get the season rolling and to get the ball rolling the right way.
“We talked a lot last season about how we need to come in this year. We know where things went wrong last year and we definitely get a sense of urgency, definitely from both fans and media.
“We want to get this going and moving in the right direction and put last year in the past. We want to be able to stop talking about it and answering questions about it.
“We believe we’re a good team. It’s up to us and we’re going to be ready to go,” said McDavid.
Asked for his take on the mood and the attitude of the team entering their 40th season in the NHL, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins characterized it as, “pretty serious right now.
“We’ve been skating together for a week and a half, I guess. They’ve been intense skates and they’ve been hard-working skates. We’ve been battling. The scrimmaging has been high intensity and good pace.
“Guys came prepared physically and mentally and I think it’s good that we’ve been skating with some pace already.
“It’s pretty serious. We want to get going. We want to start off well. We need to. We need that mindset going in.
“It’s hunger. We know what happened last year. We have to learn from what happened last year and get better from it. We’re here to regroup and get our minds refocused.”
The absolute poster boy for what happened to the Oilers as a team is Milan Lucic, who returned about a dime on the dollar for the US$6 million salary the Oilers paid him. Lucic scored a grand total for one goal in his last 43 games.
“There’s definitely a lot more of a hunger level,” said the winger who had been such a leader on the team in the 103-point, deepin-the-playoffs, run of the previous season.
“Even in the last two weeks of informal skates, I think we’ve really ramped it up getting ready to go. We have a lot of guys upset with last year who want to make things right and guys came here ready to work. That’s the mentality that we need.
“Today was like Christmas morning. Everybody is excited and with snow on the ground I think it added to it. We’re all positive and happy and looking forward to this season.
“For me, personally, I’m just trying to get happy again. I’m back to being happy coming to the rink. I think it starts with your summer workouts and getting out of bed in the morning, enjoying going to the gym and working hard, enjoying pushing yourself and all that type of stuff.
“It’s just having an optimistic, positive outlook on things and not letting things bring you down. I definitely learned a hard lesson with that last year.
“I’m not thinking of last year at all. I’m just thinking of being myself and playing my game and being the best player I can be for this team. I know everyone has the same mindset.”
LUCIC STILL FEELING YOUNG
Lucic remembers being a young player in the NHL.
“I turned 30 in June. I remember my first three or four years in the league and you think of someone who turns 30 like ‘Oh, that’s old.’
“But now that I’m here I don’t feel old, that’s for sure.”
Old man Lucic spent his spring on the couch like a lot of other old farts.
“I think it was a good thing for me mentally and motivation wise to watch basically all of the playoffs to see the emotion and the heart and the effort that goes in on a night to night basis from April to June.
“As an athlete and a competitor you want to be part of something like that again. I’ve had a lot of experience and a lot of success in the post-season. It’s just about doing the right things in the season to give yourself a chance to play for the ultimate prize,” said the veteran of 215 playoff games who became a Stanley Cup champion with the Boston Bruins in 2011.