Zack Attack subdues Sharks
Adoring fans chant Kassian’s name after former villain sparks Oilers playoff victory
EDMONTON — It was the morning after the night before, but not in the head-pounding, red-eyed, drymouthed way Zack Adam Kassian had experienced in his painful past.
It was the morning after the Zack Attack game, a special moment in Edmonton Oilers playoff history.
The Oilers were back in Rogers Place for an abbreviated practice Saturday before taking the plane to San Jose for Game 3 and it was almost as if you could still hear the fans’ chant of “Kassian! Kassian!” echo off the walls of the building.
Kassian became the first Stanley Cup hero of the ‘Orange Crush Era’ of the franchise the night before.
At the end of the game, the player Edmonton fans once loved to hate heard them chant and cheer as they waited for him to follow third star Connor McDavid and second star Cam Talbot to the ice as the first star of the game.
It was every bit as much a story of human triumph as it was hockey triumph.
The night before in his post-game interviews, it seemed Kassian was almost avoiding the topic of Kassian.
“My linemates played well,” he said of the 2-0 win that was first keyed by a series of his punishing hits that were followed by exclamation marks supplied by the unbelievable crowd that was his co-star this night.
“As a line we’ve got a lot of energy and, if we’re going to win this series, we’re going to need all the lines going and different guys stepping up every night.”
Kassian scored what would stand up as the winning goal, the first Oilers playoff game-winning goal since Fernando Pisani in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final in 2006.
“I was just trying to stay onside. That’s a good heads up play by Test,” he said of Mark Letestu.
Kassian was being the good teammate and good on him for that.
But this was the next morning and people wanted more from the best story so far this Stanley Cup season here, there or anywhere, than game story quotes.
What was it like for this 26-yearold reclamation project that Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli had given a last chance coming out of an NHL-enforced stay in a substance abuse rehabilitation centre?
What was it like to feel the absolute unconditional adoration from the same fans that used to detest him as the most despicable member of the Vancouver Canucks, especially after he broke Sam Gagner’s jaw with a high stick in a pre-season game and followed with a mocking act the night Gagner returned wearing a face shield?
Those fans that chanted his name wanted to hear Kassian tell them how that felt.
“It was cool. So unbelievably cool,” he said when your correspondent mentioned how the fans chanted as they waited for him to be named as the first star, a selection that Edmonton’s savvy hockey fans figured was coming back in the first period as they watched him play like a man possessed before he pulled the trigger.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had anything remotely like that. It just showed me how passionate our fans are here in Edmonton.
“In the playoffs, you have to have different guys step up. And when they do, the fans notice them.
“When you do, it’s really a fun barn to play in here. If you ask the players, you’re so focused in the game, so zoned in, that you don’t really hear it.
“Well, you do hear it, but you’re so zoned in just trying to win a hockey game that you only hear it in a way that increases your energy level and gives you an extra boost.”
After the game, it’s hard not to notice 18,000-plus people standing screaming “Kassian! Kassian! Kassian!”
“I didn’t have many friends in the stands coming to Edmonton (when I was) playing for Vancouver. But I knew how Edmonton is as a city. If you bring your work boots, hard hat and work hard, you can win over a lot of people. That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” he said.
Kassian was working hard to sound level-headed about it, but still pay the fans off for the greatest moment of his career and — in some ways, considering his off-theice history — of his life.
“I have to stay even keel. If this was three or four years ago and I was talking, I would have been ecstatic and maybe lost focus.
Game 3 is a brand new game. I have to bring this every night.”
In his situation, that’s totally understandable.
Allow linemate Letestu to say it for everybody.
“I certainly didn’t think they’d be chanting his name,” said Letestu, “(considering) the villain role he played here for a while.
“He has the tools to have an impact on the game, one way or the other. He has enough talent to put the puck in the back of the net. He’s always a physical presence. He’s added penalty killing to his game.
“That’s the player he can be. There’s probably another level he can get to.
“I think the post-season is fitted for anybody who is a player like Kass — the physical play, the speed, the emotion that’s in the game,” continued Letestu.
“We saw it on display in so many different facets. I think the impact he made on the game is the impression he made on the fans chanting his name.
“It was pretty obvious he was our best player.”