If we knew in training camp that the Edmonton Oilers would go 4-10-1 in December, and be without Connor McDavid, Oscar Klefbom, Kailer Yamamoto, Zack Kassian, James Neal, Joakim Nygard and Kris Russell for various stages in February, most people would have predicted another lottery season.
Granted, that’s always a pretty safe prediction, given the recent history of this franchise, but it would have seemed certain this time. No way the Oilers could they overcome all that.
But when they were sinking fast in December and the season was starting to get away from them, they regrouped and pulled out of it. When Connor McDavid went down, they culled a winning record out of those six games. When an entire wave of injuries and suspensions left $30 million of their payroll on the shelf, they found a way to maintain their forward progress.
And on Saturday night, when the big, talented and desperate Winnipeg Jets had taken charge of a crucial head-to-head showdown and were whaling away at an Oilers team on the ropes, they fought back again. Leon Draisaitl tied it late in the second, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins won it late in the third and Mike Smith stopped 19 shots in the last 20 minutes to give Edmonton sole possession of second place in the Pacific Division.
It’s not always pretty, and there are still some recurring areas of concern that need to be shored up, like in-game sags, defensive zone coverage and losing to teams like Anaheim and San Jose, but there is a scrappiness to this team that you really have to admire.
“It’s a great sign,” said Draisaitl, who had two goals and an assist to reach 102 points Saturday night, and was named the NHL’s First Star of the Month on Sunday morning. “That’s what you want in your team, a team that doesn’t give up. Our second period was terrible, so to come back out in the third and play a pretty solid period is not easy to do.
“That’s a good (Winnipeg) team over there. They have a lot of skill, they’re right in the race, they’re desperate. It was a good job by us. It would have been easy to fold and let the game get out of hand, but we didn’t do that.”
The Winnipeg game isn’t one Edmonton will want to frame — the Jets aren’t wrong when they say they deserved better — but the Oilers found a way to win. The combination of a scrappy, blue-collar do-whatever-it-takes personality, two or three of the best players in the world and a fiery goaltender who battles as hard as any of his teammates, is becoming one of the tougher outs in the league.
“The word that’s come up in this room lately is ground and pound,” said Smith, quoting the simple, but highly effective mixed martial arts style. “It’s just a gritty group. There’s a never-quit mentality that’s earned us points in a lot of games this year. It’s good to see.”
It becomes a self-perpetuating character trait. If a player sees five other guys on the ice doing it, he doesn’t want to be the sixth who doesn’t. That’s not an easy culture to instil, sometimes it can take 13 years, but it’s the difference between successful teams and talented teams that are still trying to figure it out.
“That’s what’s talked about in here,” said Smith. “You do it for the guy next to you. It’s that time of the year when you want to put it all out there and be able to look at the guy next to you, or the guy across the room, and say, ‘I gave it all I had tonight.’ Those are the types of games we’re going to play from here on out.”
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FIGHTING BACK
No two players exemplify the Oilers’ ability to fight back more than Smith and Draisaitl. They both had miserable Decembers that contributed greatly to Edmonton’s mid-season funk.
Smith went so cold they could hardly play him. He started three games and lost all of them. Draisaitl, meanwhile, went a whopping minus-24 in 14 games.
But they’ve been Edmonton’s most valuable players since and its no accident the season turned around the same time they did.
Smith is 11-1-4 in his last 16 games. And in the 51 games on either side of December, Draisaitl has 88 points and is plus-14.
“(Smith) is a leader,” said head coach Dave Tippett. “A lot of times a goaltender just goes in there and does his job, but he is one of the leaders in that room and wears his heart on his sleeve.
“(Draisaitl) wants to be a top player. He drives himself. In December when our team was struggling a little bit, he was almost trying too hard. He was trying to do too much and putting himself in trouble.
“Now he knows he is a big part of our team and has to play well and do his part. He is playing really well right now.”
E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @Rob_Tychkowski
