Ethan Bear’s mouth was waiting for the words that his brain just could not provide fast enough.
If his morning media briefing after Sunday’s epic loss were to be summed up in two sentences, it would be these two:
“It’s really hard to comprehend. I don’t really have an answer.”
Has he ever experienced anything like that stunning, paralyzing Winnipeg Jets comeback before in his career? In so crucial a game as Game 3 of a playoff series that the Oilers were finally staking a claim in?
“I wish,” he said. “Especially when you have a three-goal lead… We have to find a way to settle the storm. A way to calm them (the Jets) down and get our game going again. You can almost feel it. When something bad happened against us, you can feel it happening and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s how it feels.
“We have to figure that out. I’m not sure how.”
I’m not sure how.
Does Ethan Bear sound like a player who is ready to strap on the gear and compete tonight at the level required to beat the Winnipeg Jets in Game 4 of this series? He says he is.
“We’ve just got to accept it. Accept it now and put everything on the line,” Bear said. “You have to have that will to win. It’s such a hard thing to say right now. I would have never guessed we’d be down 3-0.”
Then, he added this: “Don’t be afraid anymore. We’re in the worst possible position we could be in. Might as well go leave it out there.”
So, an amateur psychologist might prick their ears when they heard the phrase, “don’t be afraid anymore.”
Afraid of what? Winning?
Does that explain the way Winnipeg dominated the opening periods of Games 1 and 2? Or the way the Oilers — once the momentum began to turn the other way in Game 3 — just compounded mistake after mistake?
Afraid. That’s not a word a sports writer hears very often, to be honest.
“We have to rally, lean on one another in those situations. It doesn’t feel like we are doing that, and it doesn’t feel like we aren’t,” said the young defenceman, lost in his honest effort at explaining the unexplainable. “It’s such a weird feeling. You almost feel helpless. There’s nothing you can do. I’m still trying to figure that out.”
What we don’t know is how many of his teammates are still wandering in the wilderness of that Game 3 loss, one of the three biggest chokes in this organization’s 42 years in the NHL. How many of Bear’s teammates are as mentally buried by the experience as the 23-year-old is on this, his maiden voyage in the real (non-bubble) Stanley Cup Playoffs.
For his part, at the morning meeting, his head coach did his best to steer his players away from the rocky coast of self-pity, and into calmer waters.
“We’re not grieving,” Dave Tippett said. “We’re pissed off that we lost, and we’ve to get goin’ here. If you’re feeling sorry for yourself and you’re going to wallow around for a few days, then we’re going to be in trouble. If you going to get back on the horse and get back there and go to work … then we’ll have a chance to win.
“There are enough good things to grab on to today. Find a way to win one game.”
Tippett knows how mentally fragile his team is. And he undoubtedly is disappointed to learn how they handled their first bit of playoff adversity, folding up like the proverbial pup tent.
Is he more concerned about the physical mistakes? Or the mental ones?
“It’s both,” Tippett said. “The thing about the turnovers that bothered me is, there are turnovers all over the game. It’s how you react around them. There are (many ways) you can take a mistake and turn it into a void issue.
“The ability to stay strong. Don’t let mistakes turn into critical mistakes. That’s what bothers me about last night.”
He has a very good regular season team. Now, Tippett has to build a strong playoff team.
Those two teams are more mutually exclusive than we thought, as it turns out.
“Winning in the regular season is one thing. But you have to take those lessons and be able to apply them in the playoffs,” the coach said. “Every game is a one-goal game. You have to get on top of that. We haven’t done that yet this year.”
As for Bear, his two NHL seasons have included second-place finishes in the Division, and complete and utter failures in the post-season. No wonder he is confused.
“It doesn’t matter what happens in the regular season,” he concludes. “They say it’s a different animal, yeah. But we still have to have our poise, and make plays…
“I don’t know…”
