EDMONTON — Look around the league. Is anyone rolling out 60-minute effort after 60-minute effort?
Or are the good teams doing exactly what the Edmonton Oilers are doing? That is, shuffling their lines post-trade deadline searching for the right combinations. Muddling around early in games, finding their legs, and then pulling away like the Oilers did against the Buffalo Sabres Thursday.
Will that work in the playoffs?
News flash: The playoffs are still a month away.
“We’re finding ways to get wins, (but) I would still like to see a little bit more control of games,” said Connor McDavid after a five-goal third period buried the boys from Buffalo. “It is nice to learn lessons in wins. We have had two games (this week) that could have gone the other way, and we would be having a different conversation.”
Edmonton, now 8-1-2 in their past 11 games, spotted the Sabres two goals in the opening 16:34 of the evening, fashioned a late goal before the first intermission, and then rolled to an 8-3 win. They scored the game’s final six goals, paced by two goals each by Mattias Ekholm and Zach Hyman, a four-assist night by McDavid, and goal No. 35 and two assists by Leon Draisaitl.
“If you look at the first (period), I didn’t love it,” began Mattias Ekholm, who is now a whopping plus-34 on the season, with seven goals and 32 points.. “We got in, we had a nice chat about it, and got out and showed the kind of team we are.”
What was said during the first intermission?
“It’s about to get to crunch time. We can’t lean into games and just sit there and wait,” he said. “We have a pretty mature team in here and everybody understands when we play good and bad. But sometimes it needs to be said.
“Whatever was said, I’ll keep in-house.”
Edmonton is now 13-3-1 when tied after two periods this season, a sign of a team that can retrieve its game when necessary. It’s that self-correcting quality that has been earned over the years and comes in mighty handy against a young Sabres team that hasn’t played a playoff game in 13 years — well before any of these Sabres stars were of driving age.
“Having gone to the Conference Final and the second round, in playoffs, things don’t always go your way,” said Zach Hyman, who now sits on 48 goals with the Oilers heading to his hometown for a Saturday night tilt against the Toronto Maple Leafs. “You’re going to go through some adversity in each game — even games you win. There are times where it’s not going well and the other team has momentum, or the other team has got a hold of the game and you need to find a way to elevate your game and to kind of bring it back.
“It doesn’t just happen. It takes (experience) to figure out how to elevate your game. How to grab hold of the game when things aren’t going well. How to simplify a game.
“We have a lot of guys in this locker room who have a lot of experience and can speak to it and wake the group up. We had that today.”
Alas, the poor Sabres do not.
Buffalo entered the game five points south of a playoff spot, and walked out of Rogers Place seven points behind the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild-card spot out East.
“You go into the third in a tie game, (with a) chance to win an important hockey game,” lamented Sabres centre Tage Thompson, “and they get a couple goals and we’re chasing from behind. They get another one and then it feels out of reach. Now it’s a lot of frustration we let creep into our game there at the end.
“There’s no real excuse,” he continued. “It’s a playoff push for us. Desperate hockey. You’ve got to find a way every night to at least give it your best shot — and you can’t do it for 40 or 50 minutes. It’s got to be a full 60 and that’s been our problem.”
Good teams can get away with 40 minutes of hockey, as the Oilers did in wins over Montreal and Buffalo this week. Teams like the Sabres and Canadiens, they’re not there yet.
McDavid expects more consistency from his side. But even he admits, “We know there is no perfect game. There is never going to be 60 minutes of perfect, mistake-free hockey.
“But we expect the best of ourselves, we expect that at this time of year that we are ramping up and getting ourselves ready to go.”
