Oil Kings review,
Team has a good chance to defend title
The Edmonton Oil Kings knew they were good in 2011-12, but precisely how good didn’t truly dawn on them until just before Christmas.
“We never knew we were going to be able to go all the way until that first streak,” recalled goaltender Laurent Brossoit. “But we won 11 in a row going into the Christmas break and it was there that we knew we could do anything we wanted if we put our minds to it.”
That was the first of two 11-game winning streaks — three if you count most of the first three playoff series — that defined the Oil Kings’ Western Hockey League championship season.
They hit the Christmas break with a 23-9-3 won-lost record for 49 points and a deep reservoir of confidence.
“I had us pegged to be a team that could contend in our fifth year,” said Oil Kings general manager Bob Green, with a chuckle. “But those things (predictions) never work out.”
For Green, the addition of 20-year-olds like Tyler Maxwell and Jordan Peddle changed the allure of an already strong team, one built around gifted defencemen Mark Pysyk, Griffin Reinhart, Martin Gernat and Keegan Lowe.
“Maxwell meshed well with Michael St. Croix and Dylan Wruck and we started scoring,” Green said. “You could see the goal differential get bigger and bigger as the season progressed.”
Another landmark was a Jan. 25 showdown against the Tri-City Americans at Rexall Place. TriCity had been the top team in the Western Conference much of the season and the Oil Kings were first in the Eastern Conference at that point. It was a litmus test sort of game.
The Americans eked out a 5-4 overtime victory, but that loss didn’t dent the Oil Kings’ confidence. If anything, it boosted it. They proved they could skate with one of the best teams in the WHL.
When they beat their provincial rivals, the Calgary Hitmen, on Feb. 24, that sparked another 11-game streak to close out the regular season, putting them on a confident roll entering the playoffs.
There was one small concern: The Oil Kings had never won a single playoff game in their four-year expansion history to that point. Minor concern, as it turned out.
“I was relieved when we beat Kootenay in the first game, to get that monkey off our back,” said Green.
The Oil Kings didn’t just throw the monkey off their collective backs, they flung the critter to the ground and stomped on it, sweeping the Kootenay Ice and Brandon Wheat Kings in four straight games apiece, and winning the first three games against the Moose Jaw Warriors in the conference final.
They went from winless in their playoff history, to an 11-game winning streak to make it 22 in a row, including the late-season surge, before losing 5-1 in Game 4 to Moose Jaw.
Green actually was thankful for that loss, in a careful kind of way.
“All everybody was talking about was the streak,” Green said. “That was starting to overtake the fact that we were in the conference final.”
That they were, but only for one more game before the Warriors, too, were dismissed and the Oil Kings advanced to the WHL final against the Portland Winterhawks.
That seven-game series was a win-one-lose-one dogfight, start to finish, a thrilling matchup all the way.
Asked what stands out for him from that experience, Oil Kings centre Curtis Lazar said: “Probably the emotional rollercoaster. You win a game and you’re at an all-time high, but lose a game and you’re down in the dumps.”
Lazar got “my feet wet” as a 15-year-old the previous spring, playing for the Oil Kings in a four-game loss to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and the Red Deer Rebels. So he was a precocious 16-year-old playing a key role for the Oil Kings in the 2011-12 playoffs.
The club had a good mix, as it turned out.
The leader of the team, not to mention that gifted defence corps, was Pysyk, the franchise’s first WHL bantam draft pick, its first first-round NHL draft pick, a key performer for Canada at the world junior hockey championship during the Christmas break.
“He was our heart and soul,” Lazar said.
Brossoit, of course, was stellar, particularly in the WHL final series, for which he was chosen most valuable player.
“Coming out of nowhere, with no previous playoff success and hardly any experience, to do what they did, playing against a team (Portland) that played in the league final the year before,” Green said, “it was a huge accomplishment.”
Whether it was their youth, fatigue, the ravages of that emotional roller-coaster of a WHL final series, or whatever, the magic didn’t travel with the Oil Kings to Shawinigan, Que., for the Memorial Cup championship.
Edmonton beat the host Cataractes in the tournament opener but didn’t win another game, losing to the London Knights and Saint John Sea Dogs. Finally, the Oil Kings were blown out by Shawinigan, which went on to win the tournament in its home rink.
“I still, to this day, don’t even know what happened,” said Brossoit. “We looked absolutely like a different team. We just, collectively, weren’t flowing together. I guess we could call it tired, we could call it timid. Whatever it was, it happened.”
It was a tough ending to a spectacular season.
The Oil Kings aren’t the same team this year, which is not to say they are not a contender to defend their title. They very well might, but they are a different team and they’ve had to come to terms with that.
Pysyk and two-way winger Kristians Pelss have moved on to minor pro hockey. The three 20-year-olds — Rhett Rachinski, Maxwell and Peddle — all have moved on. Gernat, an offensively minded defenceman, has not played a game, owing to off-season surgery to correct a wonky shoulder.
Still, the team is similar enough to last year to be a target for all of its WHL rivals, as any defending champion would be. That, too, has brought with it the need for adjustment, to recognize that other teams are gunning for them every night.
Yet, as the Christmas break arrived, there were signs the Oil Kings, as they had last season, were getting their act together. They hit the break on a five-game winning streak, had climbed back into first overall in the Eastern Conference, and were looking more like the powerhouse they were last season.
There is still time before the Jan. 10 WHL trade deadline for Green to deal for a 20-year-old top-six forward to add scoring punch and some grit.
Reinhart and David Musil, a solid defenceman obtained from the Vancouver Giants in an early season trade, will be back from the world junior hockey championship enriched by that experience.
The components could be in place for another deep playoff run. There has been recent evidence of pixie dust.