Edmonton Oilers feel like a playoff bear again after 10-month hibernation

You know that thing the Edmonton Oilers have been searching for all season and simply couldn’t find?

Article content

Article content

Well, they might have just found it.

It took 82 regular season games and three and a half lacklustre outings in the post-season, but this year’s playoff Oilers are starting to look like last year’s playoff Oilers.

Something clicked. And suddenly a team that couldn’t get out its own way in Games 1 and 2 against Los Angeles, and barely cheated death in Games 3 and 4, is running the Kings right out of this series.

Article content

They outshot them 79-35 over the last five periods and are one game away from riding this crest of newfound momentum right into the second round.

“When we play like that, when we keep our foot on the gas, we’re a really, really hard team to beat,” said Evander Kane, who has burst onto the scene at a level nobody expected.

“And then our skill takes over. We have some incredibly talented players. If we can continue to replicate that type of a game, even 90 per cent of it, I like our chances most nights.”

It’s hard not to.

They’re getting the goaltending from Calvin Pickard, who’s 3-0 since coming in for Stuart Skinner. They’re getting the version of Kane that they only dreamed of when he returned from a year away.

They’re getting timely depth production (two goals from Connor Brown, two from Corey Perry, two from Mattias Janmark, one from Viktor Arvidsson and three assists from Vasily Podkolzin).

Article content

Article content

Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have 20 points in five games. And the Kings’ shot totals over the last five periods have been six, seven, four, eight and 10 while the Oilers were 16, 17, 19, 14 and 13.

This is the playoff bear that’s been hibernating for 10 months.

“This year we hadn’t reached the level that we think we have in this room and I think today and in the overtime last game is maybe as good as we’ve been,” said Janmark, who has as many goals in five playoffs games as he had all season.

“I had a funny feeling when game 70 hit and I only had one or two goals I knew I wasn’t going to have a career year. I had a feeling it might show up in the playoffs.”

And it has. A lot of these guys are finding that playoff fire again.

“Some guys fade when the stakes are high and some guys raise their game,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “And Janmark is definitely a guy who raises his game.”

Article content

If you’re the Kings, this has to be deflating beyond words. They had a chance to go up 3-0. They had a chance to go up 3-1. They had a chance to put Edmonton to sleep before the Oilers found their groove and they couldn’t do it.

And now it might be too late. They let a 2-0 series lead dissolve into 2-3, with Game 5 on home ice being the most convincing of all three defeats. And now, as the worst road team in the playoffs, they have to go into the Rogers Place hornets nest and figure out a way to beat back the swarm.

Kings coach Jim Hiller admits they aren’t sure what hit them. They thought they had this thing under control just a few days ago, now they’re in deep trouble.

“They had us from the start of the game,” he said. “Out of the gate they were just better. They took it away from us, we have to go win a hockey game and take it back.

Article content

“There are no tricks here. We’ve proven we’re a pretty good hockey team. If you’re a pretty good hockey team, go out there and take it back because they just took it away from you.”

They ripped it right out of their hands, to be exact.

“When we were down 2-0 everybody pretty much wrote us off,” said Zach Hyman, who could kind of see where they were coming from.

“We didn’t look great in the first two games, didn’t look great in the third game for two periods. But I think we just rely on our experience as a group. If you just don’t go away, if you keep believing, you give yourself a chance to win.”

Now they want to do to L.A. what the Kings couldn’t do to them — stick the knife in.

And, don’t look now, but when the Oilers are up 3-2 in a series, they drop the hammer. They are 14-1 all time in this situation and 3-0 in the last three series with Los Angeles when they had a chance to close it out: 2-0 in Game 7 in 2022, 5-4 in Game 6 in 2023 and 4-3 in Game 5 last year.

Article content

“When you have a team down you want to put them away, you don’t want to give them life,” said Kane. “That’s going to be our mindset going into Game 6.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post, and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun

Article content