VANCOUVER — This is when you find out what your team is all about.
Game 2.
A roster full of players who didn’t play to anywhere near their potential in Game 1. A series that isn’t out of control – yet.
If your team is of championship calibre, they looked each other in eye in that post-game dressing room, said a few things, and they will deliver in Game 2.
“I’m not going to get into it,” Corey Perry said, “but there’s a few things — two minutes, maybe — last night after the game that we talked about. Then we moved on and everybody knows what that message means and what that message is.”
So, let’s talk about that message.
“It’s not about what guys say to each other. It’s more about what they do, how they act, how they play,” began Perry, who was brought into this Edmonton Oilers dressing room for one reason.
Because he’s a winner.
Olympic gold, Stanley Cups, World Junior gold … You can’t be part of all those teams, dress and play alongside all of those fantastic players, and not accrue the recipe to the secret sauce that all Stanley Cup-winning teams have.
“I always go back to when we won the Cup in ’07 with that team at Anaheim,” began Perry. “We had Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Teemu Selanne. Those guys, when they had a tough night, you knew they were going to be beasts the next night. You could see it, you could feel it, you could sense it.”
On this team, those players are Connor McDavid (no shots in Game 1), Darnell Nurse (zero hits, minus-3) and if he can play, Leon Draisaitl, who skipped practice on Thursday with an unknown injury.
And of course, goaltender Stuart Skinner, who could have salvaged a win out of a so-so Oilers effort with a few more saves on Wednesday against the Vancouver Canucks.
In a dressing room full of pros, nobody needs to remind anyone about a poor performance. In fact, an NHL dressing room is the polar opposite of what many might think. A place where blame is overwhelmed by the process of building teammates into the player they have to be for a team to win.
In a word, it is anti-social media.
“As teammates, you’re there to uplift teammates,:” said Zach Hyman. “You want to get the best out of them, and dwelling on the past performance doesn’t do any good. So it’s wake up, wash it, we’ve got to win four and they’ve got to win three. It’s not the end of the world.”
Embroiled in their seventh playoff series in the last three springs, this is the one clear advantage the Oilers have over the Canucks: Experience.
They’ve lost five of those Game 1’s over the last three years, and went on to win three of those series. So they know the process, and have a road map that they’ve travelled successfully several times before.
“Guys understand how to flush it, how to be better, and how to get the best version of themselves,” Hyman said. “If you’re not able to respond, you’re probably not going be playing for very long.”
While the internet buries the Cody Ceci-Nurse pairing for being on the ice when some very suspect goals got past Skinner, there is zero finger-pointing inside the walls of Edmonton’s dressing or video rooms.
It has to be that way, on a healthy, proper NHL team.
“If the goalie is not seeing it properly, how can we help you? If the D aren’t breaking the puck out properly, how can we help you? If the forwards aren’t sustaining O-zone pressure, how can we help you?” listed Hyman. “It’s a collective question with regards to how can we help each other.
“This game is very much a team game, and even if there are individual mistakes, a lot of times people don’t notice it if the team is picking up for each other. So it’s about, how do we get the best version of each other?”
These are the intangibles that many people on the outside scoff at, joined by nobody on the inside.
“It starts with being a brotherhood in this dressing room. Picking people up when they’re down,” instructs Perry. “You play 82 games with the same guys, over and over and over again. You’re bound to have a bad game here and there. But you’re looked upon to respond, and you’re judged on your response.”
So, there is judgment.
But not on a mistake, or a poor night. On how you respond.
That what separates good players — good teammates — from bad ones.
“I’ll keep going back to it: You’re judged on your response,” Perry promised. “You pretty much have to find a way to be better.
Last night we weren’t great. We were OK at points, but we weren’t great.
“We know that in the room. No one has to tell you.”
