OILERS STOOD AND DELIVERED WHEN THEY BADLY NEEDED TO
Dominant Game 2 performance proof team is ready to shed the playoff patsies label
Nobody on the team or in the organization who caught their charter flight to Los Angeles would come right out and say it publicly.
But they didn't have to. There were 18,374 fans in the stands at Rogers Place in a frenzy saying it for them.
The Edmonton Oilers had finally done it. They'd finally stepped up and delivered.
The Oilers headed to California following a Game 2 win over the Kings — the Oilers first playoff win before a capacity crowd of fans in Rogers Place in five years. They'd won a game that had to rank as a stand-alone, significant, separate game to frame from an assortment of angles.
Connor Mcdavid, Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse, Ryan Nugent-hopkins, Evander Kane and everybody else head coach Jay Woodcroft dressed had no option but to produce, and what an impressive, assertive, dominant playoff hockey game they produced — to give them wings to fly south having finally proved in a playoff game they have grown into a team of substance.
It was an absolute must-win, nowhere-to-hide, fly-or-fail game to be able to take forward to their immediate future.
Lose it, even in overtime like they did here last year (much less follow it with two more overtime losses on the road like they did in Winnipeg), and it would be hard to picture them being able to go back to the drawing board.
They won it 6-0 in a take no prisoners, everybody show up and play, big boy playoff hockey show of will and skill with dominant power play and penalty killing like they had at the start of the regular season.
With their Stanley Cup playoff window open for the first time, general manager Ken Holland's Oilers appeared to grow up and catch that plane to L.A. as a very visibly evolved entity.
Woodcroft, who has still yet to lose consecutive games at home, predictably projected it post-game as another game to celebrate for 20 minutes and move on.
So far he's been good at selling that. And good on him if on the flight to L.A. for Games 3 and 4 on Friday and Sunday he is able to convince his players to continue to find that focus. Game 3 will have been wasted if they don't.
There's a definite danger built in here going into Game 3. This team that lost Game 1 late on a goaltending gaffe by Mike Smith didn't even succeed in winning back home ice advantage in the series on Wednesday.
And there's no suggestion here that Todd Mclellan's collection of young talent, that includes eight players who came to Edmonton without a single game of Stanley Cup experience, lost more than one hockey game in Rogers Place.
The Kings came into this series after their Cinderella season with nothing to lose and everything to gain. That hasn't changed because of what the scoreboard said.
This series was expected to go six or seven games by most and it still should be expected to do so. But so much changed as this Edmonton team caught its flight to California.
On a night when they had no choice, the Oilers stepped up and proved to themselves and their fans and a North American television audience that they weren't going to be playoff patsies yet again.
They made the statement that there wasn't going to be another first-round flop for this team that had managed to lose their seven previous playoff hockey games going into Game 2.
Yes, it was only one game.
But the way they won, the Oilers could climb on that plane and legitimately tell themselves they're the team they proved to be in going 18-4-3 in their last 24 games of the regular season and not suffering a regulation loss at home in their previous 15 games until the 4-3 loss in Game 1.
With the win, the Oilers will now return for Game 5 on Tuesday — only the ninth actual home gate (the other six were in 2017) in Daryl Katz's history as owner.
As they headed south, you should know that there should be no significant Kings advantage in Los Angeles. The Oilers were 21-15-5 on the road this year and the Kings 21-16-4 at home.
The Oilers won five of their last seven on the road and both games in the Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as the Staples Center) by scores of 3-2 and 5-2.
Game 2 was a game led by Connor Mcdavid with the most physical and motivated performance he's put together yet, and that's saying something. Leading by example with a complete lineup of teammates living up to the moment, the captain inspired his team to return to playing that attention to detail game and to do it in the playoffs.
Woodcroft most certainly wouldn't have been able to convince the 18,374 fans who provided an extra special playoff scene for Gary Bettman that they and the NHL commissioner hadn't witnessed a significant night in Edmonton's Stanley Cup playoff history.
Indeed, it would have been appropriate if Bettman had been able to certify it as such or something.