“THIS TEAM HAS IT ALL”
D
arnell Nurse has mourned in silence, more often than you’d think.
After all those seasons where his Edmonton Oilers lost a series or didn’t make the playoffs, most of us simply turned the page into summertime, content that this was the natural order.
Like in last year’s Western Conference Final sweep at the hands of the mighty Colorado Avalanche. Edmonton just wasn’t good enough — wasn’t there yet —and had been vanquished by a superior opponent. Right, Darnell?
“No, I won’t say that,” says Nurse. “I like the roster that we had.”
Look, you have to know hockey players.
The good ones are so competitive that they are blinded to objective realities. It’s why they complain about obvious penalty calls, and why Nurse won’t acquiesce to what every hockey fan in the NHL would agree on: that the Avalanche were simply better than Edmonton 11 months ago.
To him, that series was not a final judgment. Rather, it was a rung on the ladder — part of a long, painful climb that started the day he was drafted by Edmonton a decade ago.
“It takes a lot of heartbreak,” Nurse explains. “This is my eighth year here, so I’ve gone through seven seasons where you haven’t reached the goal that you want to reach. There’s a lot of heartbreak, a lot of work that goes into it.
“I read Nick Lidstrom’s book [Nicklas Lidstrom: The Pursuit of Perfection, written with Gunnar Nordstrom and Bob Duff], and the amount of times that [Detroit] had to actually go and play in the playoffs, and get through the ups and downs of the playoffs before they were actually successful? I mean, it’s time and time again.
“You look at the teams that win — the amount of work, the amount of attempts that they had to take at it to get to that Stanley Cup. It’s not an easy task.”
Welcome to Edmonton in 2023, where a rebuild that began back in 2010 with the first-overall selection of Taylor Hall has finally produced a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. The sun may have dawned a handful of seasons ago, finally bringing an end to The Decade of Darkness, but the trip back into the light has been like a walk from the banks of the North Saskatchewan River to 101st and Jasper Ave.
All uphill.
“Each year is kind of different, right?” says Nurse. “You look back at losing the play-in to Chicago [in 2019-20]. We just got out-worked for three, four games. Winnipeg [in the first round in ’20-21], we weren’t able to score those big goals in overtime and find a way to win. Last year, you get to the Conference Final, but we got outplayed in the third round by Colorado.”
Today, as another post-season begins in a city that has once again grown accustomed to qualifying each and every spring, “there’s a hunger in the room that there’s still another level that we need to get to,” explains Nurse. “Not just win a couple rounds of the playoffs, but to get to the ultimate goal.”
T
he Oilers are the National Hockey League’s most potent offensive team.
They have two of the NHL’s four 50-goal, 100-point players in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. They are the only team with four 35-goal men (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman joining McDavid and Draisaitl). They have three of the league’s top nine point-getters and a powerplay that operates at 32.4 per cent — the most efficient unit since they began charting powerplay efficiency in 1977-78.
But they’ve always had offence, right?
“For me, it used to be that there was there was some skill there — and skill is great,” observes Dallas Eakins, who was let go on Friday from his position as Anaheim’s head coach. “But the will and grit and the ability to keep pucks out of your net are golden, especially come playoff time.”
That quality has arrived, with a healthy dose of size and backbone in tow.
“Now,” says Eakins, who coached Edmonton a decade ago, “if you want to come in and play a skilled game against the Oilers, they’re like, ‘All right, let’s have it.’ And if you want to take it out in the back alley, and play back there with maybe nobody looking and no rules? They’re more than willing to do that now too.”
Since the season began, Edmonton has added defencemen Vincent Desharnais (six-foot-six, 215 pounds) and Mattias Ekholm (six-foot-four, 215 pounds), and centre Nick Bjugstad (six-foot-six, 209 pounds).
If one of hockey’s oldest clichés holds true — that big-and-good beats small-and-good every time — then you can now check that box in the Oilers’ favour.
But this is a team that had to learn other lessons, too:
General manager Ken Holland had to build enough depth for the Oilers to win more of the games McDavid or Draisaitl didn’t win for them, however few those may be. And head coach Jay Woodcroft had to develop a system that could not only beat opponents 5-4, but win those inevitable 2-1 games as well.
The Oilers allowed just six goals in their final seven games of the season, only once allowing an opponent to score twice. They took home 29 of the final 30 available points, going 14-0-1 down the stretch while posting a No. 3-ranked penalty kill (88.4 per cent) and goals against per game (2.20) over that span.
Those numbers make it seem like they’ve finally arrived at that place that all good offensive teams get to, that collective ‘Steve Yzerman moment’ that may just be the final piece of the puzzle.
But are we truly there?
“I guess you don’t know until you know,” says McDavid, with a chuckle. “It’s not like you feel finished or satisfied or anything like that. The only thing that would satisfy would be winning the last game of the year.”
A personal quest for defensive responsibility on McDavid’s part that began a few years ago has spread throughout the roster, apparent in the level of team defence and goaltending that recently saw them beat first round opponent Los Angeles twice, 3-1 and 2-0.
The ability this Oilers team has shown to play a patient, low-gamble game runs counter to what we have come expect from this franchise since about 1990.
Then again, so does challenging for a Stanley Cup.
“We’re always continuing to focus on being a defensive team,” McDavid says. “I know we’re a high-scoring team, and some nights it doesn’t always look like we’re trying to be that team. But that’s the team we want to be. Really.
“We’re in the room every day, and the things we say, the video we watch, that’s always the focus.”
The transformation is led by their captain, and when you have a leader whose offence wins the Art Ross Trophy but whose defensive play is out there on display every night, it grows like a well-planted crop, taking in every corner of the dressing room.
“Whether it’s defence, offence, hitting, fighting, or whatever it may be,” Evander Kane says of McDavid’s leadership, “you can’t just be barking in the room all the time, then go out there and do the opposite. You’ve got to be about it … on the ice. You can do whatever you want in [the dressing room]. You’ve got to do it on the ice. Otherwise, it’s just all talk.”
Thirty one times this season, the Oilers allowed two or fewer goals. Edmonton was 27-3-1 in those games.
“We’re confident that we can score, but in the playoffs you have got to be able to defend,” states 36-goal man Zach Hyman. “You’ve got to be able to limit chances, because [offensive]chances are hard to come by. Everybody tightens it up.”
D
ucks defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk has been around the NHL through nearly 900 career games.
He was one of the veterans in a strong, heavy St. Louis Blues program in the early-to-mid-2010s who knew their size, strength and structure would usually prevail over the young, freewheeling Oilers of the day.
“Maybe it was it was kind of a strange period for them,” Shattenkirk offers. “They were getting all those high picks, and we all knew the game was moving that way — to a more skilled and faster game — but, you know, it wasn’t there yet.
“And they were playing in the West at a time where you had the Blackhawks, the Kings, the Sharks. Teams like us [in St. Louis]. Dallas was good. Just big, heavier teams [against whom]it was hard for them to come in at a young age and be able to perform.”
From his latest stop in Anaheim, Shattenkirk has seen the evolution. He nods to a team that has stood patiently in line, and might finally be getting nearer the pay window.
“Ken Holland came in, he knew what he had,” Shattenkirk says. “But it takes time. I’m sure it’s taken a lot longer than everyone expected, or they wanted. But it’s hard for guys to come in at a young age and turn a franchise around.”
Today, with another playoff journey beginning in a sports town whose very DNA is made of blue and orange strands, another kick at the can begins.
Another at-bat.
“Kenny talks a lot about that, right?” says McDavid, of his boss, Holland. “You always have to give yourself a chance to get in, get in, get in…
“I feel like we’re at a place, with the guys we have in our room, with the culture that we’ve built here, that I can see us getting in consistently, giving ourselves that chance. One year it just needs to go right. And you never know when that year’s gonna be.”
Whenever it comes, Northern Alberta will be ready, having suffered alongside Nurse. As the Taylor Halls turned into the Ryan Nugent-Hopkinses, the Nail Yakupovs to the Connor McDavids, a roster that always made a splash never managed to carry enough water to seriously contend.
If you just walked in the door in 2023, however, free from the yolk of history the way Mattias Ekholm is, this team appears much closer to a finished product than locals might allow themselves to dream.
“I said this to my wife the other day: I think this is probably the most talented team I’ve been on in my career,” the veteran Ekholm explains. “I’ve been on some good teams, but to have the high-end talent up front that we have, and showing what we can do defensively — over a little bit of a stretch here — I do think this team has it all.”
When it comes to winning Stanley Cups, Edmonton’s organizational memory has long been packed in a trunk in the attic, dusty and forgotten. But for Ekholm, these Oilers are his chance to finish a job on which he fell just a bit short in Nashville.
Forget about the history. The present is here, and it looks just fine to him.
“The year we went [to the Stanley Cup]with Nashville, we were No. 16 seed going into the playoffs,” he recalls. “We ended up sweeping Chicago, the No. 1 seed, in the first round. And then there you go. You get that juice, you get that momentum…
“Do I think this team can replicate something like that? Yes. 100 per cent.”
Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Paul Swanson/NHLI via Getty Images; Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images.
