After years of being playoff understudies, Oilers are ready for a starring role

EDMONTON — We never know when a team is ready to win.

When the Tampa Bay Lightning have completed their playoff degree by losing in seven to the eventual Cup champs Washington, and then imploding in four games against Columbus.

When Colorado has had enough disappointment meted out by the Dallases, the San Joses and the Vegases, and becomes a four-round hammer rather than the Round 2 nail.

When Joe Thornton’s San Jose Sharks… Well, somehow they never did figure it out, did they?

“I don’t think you ever know. Nobody knows,” said Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl. “But those experiences just fuel you, and in a way create a hunger and a maturity level. You know what (the playoffs are) like, and you know what you have to change. You know what hurt you last year.

“It’s just learning, growing and maturing.”

Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1: Oilers vs. Kings

Keep up with the latest news and analysis as the Edmonton Oilers take on the Los Angeles Kings in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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As another playoffs opens for the Connor McDavid-Leon Draisaitl era here in Edmonton, with the duo skating out for their 50^th career playoff game Monday night versus the Los Angeles Kings, we bring you the next in line among National Hockey League seniors who feel like it’s graduation time this spring.

This isn’t Toronto, home to so many first-round flops and key players who — to this day — have not figured out how to produce after mid-April.

This is Edmonton, where since 2017 Draisaitl and McDavid are the NHL’s top points-per-game playoff producers at 1.57 and 1.53 respectively. Where the Oilers made it to Round 2 in ’17, took steps back in ’18, ’19 and ’20, then went three rounds in ’21 and another two last year — losing to the Stanley Cup champions in consecutive seasons.

They are as ready to win as anyone before them, because they have suffered as many disappointments as did Tampa, Colorado, or anyone else you wish to name.

“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from our many failures. That’s what great teams do, what great people do,” said McDavid. “They learn from their mistakes, they learn from their failures, and they put (those lessons) into ultimately putting it all together.”

In hockey, more than any other sport, winning a Stanley Cup has always carried with it a sword-in-the-stone mystique.

You don’t just win it. You work at it, you study it, you fail at it.

You live in it — and it lives in you — until finally one spring you snatch that pebble from Phil Pritchard’s hand and the answer becomes yours.

“Understanding the playoffs. Understanding playoff series. Understanding a playoff game,” listed McDavid. “You know the ebbs and flows, the momentum shifts, the big moments.”

It’s far more cerebral than physical, in this most physical playoffs of any of our major sports.

“Sports in general is very mental,” McDavid said. “Hockey is no different; playoffs are no different. You’ve got to be focused, you’ve got to stick with it. That’s all between the ears.”

Tonight, the journey begins once again, seemingly as always versus an L.A. Kings team that has taught Edmonton as many lessons as any opponent. Today, when a 28-year-old Leon Draisaitl lugs the puck over centre and faces a neutral zone packed full of Kings defenders, he has the muscle memory to dump that puck deep.

The 24-year-old Leon Draisaitl was more likely to stubbornly try and stickhandle through the maze. And as often as not, watch the Kings go the other way with the puck.

“Two years ago there was probably a lot more individual mistakes made than then there’s going to be this year,” he said. “We’re a much, much more mature group this year than we were last year or the year before. And that’s just due to having been in those moments and those situations.”

Today’s Oilers should more quickly recognize and avert that three-goals-in-1:29 disaster that sunk them in Game 5 against Vegas last spring. They should see it coming when the situation dictates a deviation from the game plan; a pivot that is inevitable in any war of attrition that is a Stanley Cup march.

“The biggest lesson I’ve learned from the playoffs is,” begins veteran defenceman Mattias Ekholm, “if you’re going to go all the way — I’ve been close but not all the way — you’re going to have to win games that you don’t deserve. It sounds weird, but sometimes two teams are lacking and not having their night. You can play bad and win, and that’s huge in the playoffs. You can’t always (outplay) the opponent.”

Some nights you have to hang on long enough to wait for the break. Remain viable until the goal finds you, rather than always thinking that you are going to find the goal.

“I can go back to (Nashville) when we clinched to go to the Final against Anaheim,” Ekholm said. “We had 18 shots that game but we scored six goals. Now, that doesn’t happen every night, but we got there — and nobody talks about that game today.”

It’s funny, isn’t it?

When you’re the Edmonton Oilers, you only want them talking about one game when this playoff run concludes. The one that ends with hardware.

If they’re talking about a different game, when it’s all said and done, it means you weren’t ready yet.

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