Edmonton Oilers Playoff Thoughts: Round 1, Game 1

Having the same Round 1 every year has gotten boring. But the games need to be played, so what can you do? The LA Kings meeting our Edmonton Oilers for a fourth straight year is similar to the late 90s and early 2000s Oilers, when they were always meeting the Dallas Stars in the Playoffs. Before last year’s Conference Final, Edmonton’s only series win against Dallas was their first in 1997, with Game 7 Overtime heroics from Curtis Joseph and Todd Marchant. It was a major upset at that time, but they lost the second round against the Colorado Avalanche. The year after, their first and second round opponents switched spots. Edmonton upset Colorado and then lost to Dallas. Then, between 1999 and the 2005 lockout, they’d look up at the Stars and lose four more early rounds.

How many fans of either Edmonton or Los Angeles head into this series thinking “(sigh) again?” LA is to us what we were to Dallas. With that said, there’s always a first time for everything. As much as we don’t want it, if there were any year for the Kings to finally slay this dragon of theirs, it should be this year. It’s at least like that on paper, from an unbiased perspective. Connor McDavid challenged the notion with the media that they’re going in as a wounded team, but you still can’t pretend that nagging injuries haven’t been a problem for the captain’s squad. Everybody plays through injuries in the postseason every year, but it’s harder when you get them before as opposed to during, and especially when one of them is your best all-around defenseman being out for the entire opening round. Leon Draisaitl hung onto the Rocket Richard trophy after being absent a lot in March and early April. However, I’m not too concerned with someone who’s historically built like a tank. In the previous three meetings, Edmonton had the home ice advantage. In this meeting, LA has it, and they had the best home record in the regular season.

Teams having back-to-back trips to Round 4 isn’t a common thing in today’s NHL, even going back to Round 3 is sometimes a difficulty. The defending champs did that, much to our chagrin. If Edmonton’s going to attempt that, they’ll need to overcome what might just be their toughest Round 1 in the last half of a decade. The keys to the series are…

Committee: So like I said, Ekholm isn’t playing in this series. Kris Knoblauch announced yesterday that Evander Kane and Trent Frederic are still not ready for the start of the Playoffs, perhaps they’re ready later on. The Oilers will have to continue dogging it out like they have been the last month, decently, I might add. McDavid honoured Jeff Skinner with the locker room belt the night they clinched a Playoff spot. What is Skinner feeling about his first Game 83 appearance after 1000+ games played? Can he use that as fuel and motivation? A lot of Edmonton’s forwards struggled to find offensive consistency in points. But a good postseason can often forgive a bad regular season. The news about Ekholm is a wake-up call for our defense pairings as well.

Properly Cooked Stu: Stuart Skinner’s play in his 3rd NHL season has been a polarizing one within the Oilers fanbase. I like Skinner, and I don’t blame him for every goal against, like many other fans on social media. But the Oilers broadcast team was a bit too biased and defensive about some of his games for my liking. We’re not only concerned with his below-average .896 SV% this season, we’re even more concerned with his jaw-dropping .794 SV% against teams that made the Playoffs. Earlier in the season, he was good at bouncing back from bad losses. But he got substantially worse from late February onward. From the human being aspect, he’s burnt out from the extra workload that was placed on him early. He wasn’t supposed to be the #1 goalie yet, but his team ordered the wrong can of soup and didn’t cook it well. His last two games were solid; he’s had a couple of days away from the bench. Let’s see if this break is better for him than the 4 Nations break was.

Bulletin Board Material: Just so my readers won’t get the wrong idea, I DON’T condone Darnell Nurse’s cross-check to Quinton Byfield last week that earned him a one-game suspension. I called him out for it in my article covering the following game. He’d better not do that in the Playoffs, given that we don’t have Ekholm right now. In fact, no rational fan should like seeing any team resort to that. But more than one thing can be true. Corey Perry didn’t take too kindly to Phillip Danault saying, “I think they just have their B squad in trying to hurt us”. For more context, the Oilers didn’t have either McDavid or Draisaitl in the lineup for that game. I’m not taking too much away from Danault; he’s a good player. It just sounded like he was trying to bring back the one or two man team narrative that so many people have parroted. How does our so-called B squad feel about being viewed like that?