EDMONTON — The fact that the Edmonton Oilers’ entire season was suspended in time — players and coaches waiting/praying on a decision from a Situation Room that’s 4,000 km away, on a puck that was a couple of millimeters over the goal line — should tell us all we need to know.
The Oilers have relinquished control of their season to forces beyond their control. And not just here, in April.
What we’re watching here in the playoffs is a metaphor for the 2025-26 season. For a team coming off of two elongated springs, met with a viciously compressed Olympic schedule that touched everyone, beating up various different teams in various different ways.
It hit Florida hard and early, laid low by injury and fatigue. It struck Edmonton more slowly, methodically, through a season in which they have grabbed hold of their game and delivered consistent content for more than one week maybe three or four times.
The other 20-some weeks have been spent in assorted stages of losing said game, searching for said game, or flushing some horrid effort and heading back to the drawing board.
And now, the injuries that struck the Panthers early have arrived at the same late hour as these young studs from Anaheim, the next great force out West. These eager Ducks would likely be vulnerable to a hard, defensively conscious game.
Alas, if only the Oilers had one in them this spring.
They’re spent, this roster, its best player with a governor on his game like a golf cart that has strayed too far off the path.
Leon Draisaitl’s knee conveniently healed just in time for Game 1. But as this series wears on, he’s missing practices he’d usually take part in, and losing battles he always wins at this time of year.
The third-line centre, Jason Dickinson, was injured late in the season, has missed two playoff games, and is skating like a guy I used to play Saturday hockey with at Sturgeon Arena. The 1,000-game fourth line centre, Adam Henrique, will end his time in Edmonton on the injury list, and his rookie replacement (Josh Samanski) has taken two rookie penalties that resulted in two Anaheim power-play goals.
And don’t even get us started on Edmonton’s penalty kill….
“We’ve had leads in all four games,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “There have been numerous penalties, where we have a lead and they score on the power to give them an opportunity to get back in the game.
“Every game has been a little bit different,” he mused. “We haven’t been able to get that save or another clear or a blocked shot (on the penalty kill). A loose puck… The biggest opportunities that we’re giving them is on their power play.”
Teams that are chasing the game take penalties. Edmonton is chasing all series long because they’re out of gas.
You can shout, “Excuses!”
I watch the games and I’m telling you what I see.
I would never have predicted that the Ducks could expose all of this so efficiently. They’ve upped their game for playoffs, and have made it clear: a level this far from the Oilers’ best game isn’t going to be enough.
Now, Anaheim will simply get better as their confidence grows. As Jackson Lacombe schools Evan Bouchard the way Bouchard did to Quinn Hughes two years ago in that series against Vancouver.
As the Ryan Poehlings and Tim Washe’s come off the ice after a shift won against a McDavid or a Draisaitl. As goalie Lukas Dostal — who has been only a little better than OK in this series — looks in the mirror and says, “I’ve got way more than this, and we’re STILL winning.”
These Edmonton players are wearing Oilers sweaters, but watching them with a 2-0 lead in Game 4 — or a 3-2 lead — they looked nothing like the Oilers who routinely have come back in series’ in past years.
And the worst part? They’ve got to know it.
We always say it: the players know before everyone else. They know they’ve brought a donkey to the Derby here, and that prolonging this thing may be good for the pride, but not for Draisaitl’s knee, Hyman’s wrist, or McDavid’s leg.
So Knoblauch will have to coach some belief into his team for Game 5, if that’s possible for a group that will be as hard to fool as this one.
“I believe there is some of that. That’s the coach’s responsibility (to instill belief),” he said. “Some of that (will come from) how we’re approaching some of these games. How we’re going to alter our game just a little bit. What adjustments are we making?
“Credit to Anaheim,” he said. “They’re a very good team, and if you look at the streaks they’ve gone on, I believe they’re playing very good hockey right now. We have to find a way how to break them.”
Like we said: Edmonton had two winning streaks of three or more games all season long. Eleven other times they tripped on the third game.
Now, they need to hop off the trainer’s table and fashion a three-game skein just to earn the right to play another round.
Sunday’s game pushed Edmonton past Florida as the team that’s played the most hockey in the last five years. That takes a toll.