You’re never dead until you lose on home ice.
It’s a motto the Oilers have unintentionally lived and died by in recent years, and something they’ll have to deal with again after dropping another Game 1 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Last night it was at the hands of their first round foes, the Los Angeles Kings, who took advantage of Oilers penalties, scoring twice on the power play, while fending off a four-goal third period from Edmonton in a 6-5 win.
None of this is new territory for the Oilers in the McDavid-Draisaitl era, who have now fallen to 3-11 in Game 1’s in the playoffs. No, it isn’t a typo. This team just hasn’t met a Game 1 they’ve liked.
So it’s not like this is territory they haven’t been in before, and they’ll almost surely find a way to make a series of it, but there’s no denying this one had some sting to it — especially in the first 40 minutes, where the Kings seemingly rag dolled the Oilers, shooting them 17-10 and outscoring them 4-1.
But that resiliency that’s so baked into the DNA of these Oilers came out in the third after Leon Draisaitl got them on the board with six seconds left in the second period. It was a Herculean effort from Connor McDavid we’re so used to seeing as he fought off a hulking Anze Kopitar to feed Draisaitl.
That energy carried over into the second, where 2:19 in, Mattias Janmark scored a goal on a goalie, banging in a loose puck. And while the Kings would get one back to re-gain a three-goal lead, the Oilers came at them in waves. Corey Perry made it a two goal came just under three minutes later, then a pair of goals from Zach Hyman and McDavid tied it up at five. The only problem? A leaky Stuart Skinner let another slip past on a knuckleball shot from Philip Danault that ended the game.
Pulling good from a loss isn’t always easy, but it’s exactly what Hyman and the Oilers can do.
“It wasn’t our best game. I just think that we can be a lot better,” said Hyman after the game. “They’re a really good team, they play well in this building — having said that, we gave ourselves a chance to win this game, so I like that we stayed with it even though there was a lot of opportunities to quit.
“5-on-3, guys were blocking shots down two there. Didn’t get the call we wanted, had to battle through that and face that adversity, then to come out and tie the game there — it’s still a loss, but I think you can take some positive out of that.”
It took some work to get there, of course.
The line blender didn’t take long to come out as Kris Knoblauch and co. started mixing things up in the second period. Some of that comes with the territory of finding out where Trent Frederic, who played just 9;11, would fit in the lineup, while most comes in hopes of finding some offence from the big guns.
“I’ve seen it many times last year: they never give up, they’re resilient, they stay composed and then focus on what needs to be done,” Knoblauch said. “We’ve seen a lot of adversity over the last two playoffs, and guys stick with it. They’re mature group, they can handle a lot of adversity, they’ve seen a lot and they don’t get too rattled when things aren’t going well. That first 40 minutes, things hadn’t gone very well for us.”
Now, the Oilers will look to do something they’ve done so many times before after a Game 1 loss, and win Game 2. Following their previous 10 Game 1 losses, the Oilers have gone an impressive 7-3.
Can they do it again?
