Oilers must embrace playoff journey after frantic fold job in Game 1

09/05/2024

VANCOUVER — This, friends, is the playoff journey. How are you enjoying it so far?

A game well in hand turns into a crazy, frantic fold job. A lead you’ve been holding for a few months now sifts through your fingers on the latest, greatest, most important game of the season.

A goalie who’s been stellar for most of six months gets burned for the second time on an Opening Night in Vancouver, scorched for three goals inside five minutes as a 4-1 lead somehow morphs into a 5-4 loss in Game 1.

“We definitely gave them this one.”

That was the voice of goaltender Stuart Skinner, who was level-headed and thoughtful in describing what happened here, as the Oilers let shaky Canucks rookie goalie Arturs Silovs off the hook with just seven shots on goal in the last 40 minutes.

“A little bit too passive,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “It wasn’t how we wanted to play. We could be a little more assertive.”

Meanwhile, Skinner put his team on the hook by steering a harmless pass into his own net before getting fooled on the game-winner by a nice shot fake and five-hole groove courtesy of Conor Garland.

“Stu has won us so many games; he’s played so spectacular through the year,” Knoblauch said. “There are going to be games that aren’t his ‘A’ game, and he’ll be the first to admit today wasn’t his ‘A’ game.”

“(Garland) held on to it and I lost my patience. I got bit for that. Lesson learned for me,” said Skinner. “Unfortunate for myself with that fifth that gave them a ton of momentum.”

Over the course of what Edmonton hopes to be a lengthy playoff run, you’re going to win some games that it looked like you’d lose. And there will be nights like this one, where a lead evaporates.

Games where you play pretty well and lose. Games you don’t love that end up with the music blaring post-game, and a bus running outside the rink so you can get outta Dodge.

“I loved the way we played the first eight, nine minutes of that third period. They had nothing,” said Mattias Ekholm. “I thought we were doing all the things you’re supposed to do when you have a two-goal lead.”

But then J.T. Miller scored the 4-3 goal on a bad angle deflection. It was a deft, skilled play by Miller, but not even a scoring chance surrendered by the Oilers.

After that, the floodgates opened.

“When they score, it’s all about that next shift,” said Ekholm. “They’re going to score — it’s not like we’re going to keep them to nothing here. But we let him get three goals and put ourselves in a really tough spot.

“Kind of gave it away. That’s the disappointing part.”

In their seventh playoff series in the past three seasons, Edmonton knows one thing for sure: Win Game 2 and you’ll come home feeling completely in control of this series.

This was as weird a playoff game as we’ve witnessed this spring, with more than one writer — both Vancouver and Edmonton — muttering on the way down to the dressing rooms, “I’m not even sure how to write this one.”

It started weird, on a Canucks too-many-men penalty just 40 seconds into the game, got stranger when Cody Ceci’s shot was deflected past Silovs by his own D-man, and stayed weird when Skinner returned the favour late in the second period.

In between that was the rarest of goalie penalties, issued to Skinner for playing the puck outside the trapezoid (he tripped and fell, touching the puck) and a Zach Hyman goal that Silovs shouldn’t let in.

And things finished with the Garland goal that Skinner wants back.

“Strange goals all around,” said Connor McDavid, after his quietest game of these playoffs, another oddity. “We scored some strange ones too. Kind of a frantic game — some weird ones, some preventable ones too.”

The one mistake here by Edmonton was trying to make a 4-1 lead stand-up, while Silovs was standing in the Canucks net, surely feeling less than great about his game.

“When you get up, you can’t just shut it down and hope that we’re going to be able to stifle teams. You know that Vancouver is going to bring it,” Skinner said. “There’s definitely a lesson learned here for us: no matter what the score is, you’ve got to know that the other team is not going to just let you win.”

Leon Draisaitl was hurt midway through the second period, but finished the game. He was not made available to media post-game, instead sequestered in the trainer’s room.

Draisaitl played just 16:43, had two assists, and had the Oilers’ final chance, a one-timer with the goalie pulled that Silovs denied.

Is he injured?

“Nothing,” Knoblauch said. “Cramping and equipment issues.”

Hey, this is the playoff journey.

Guys get hurt. Goals go in. Wins turn into losses.

Nobody said it was going to be stress-free.

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