“You can judge for yourself whether you believe in us or not. I think we've proven that year after year.” — Zach Hyman on his Edmonton Oilers.
EDMONTON — It was The Tragically Hip who warned us about the dangers of dwelling on yesterday's accomplishments.
“You can’t love to live in the past.” advised by the great Canadian poet Gord Downey. “Because if you do, there's no way you'll last.“
So how does this apply to an Oilers team that has been a losing team for three straight autumns, but enters Tuesday's five-game homestand with full confidence that they are ready to pull the same rabbit out of the same old cylinder that has magically escaped them the last two seasons?
“Our locker room has been through this before,” Zach Hyman said Monday, a day before Edmonton was scheduled to play just its 10th home game in 27 starts. “We went through adversity, through external noise, through all the chaos that comes with it…
“We're used to it. We know we need to play better and it's up to you whether you believe in us or not. I think we've proven that year after year.”
Around this time two seasons ago, with Chris Knoblauch just a few weeks on the Oilers bench, Edmonton came into Washington and won 5-0. They never looked back from that game on, going 44-15-5.
“More like an Oiler,” Hyman said that night in Washington. “Great special teams, great PK, great power play.” Great saves that kept us in the game early on. Great power play…
“It's the kind of game that you look at and say, 'Yeah. This is how we have to play.”
About a year later, back in the game with a 10-9-2 record on Nov. 22, Mattias Ekholm talked about the concept of how a Stanley Cup finalist could make just a few changes but still arrive at the start of the season as a bunch of complete strangers.
“Ultimately, it’s about how you work together as a team,” Ekholm said. “Everything might look great on paper and you think, 'Oh, they'll just pick up where they left off, right?' Well, that's not how it works.
“Everything can change in the blink of an eye. It could be one guy here or one guy there, and then all of a sudden nothing works.”
Today, the Oilers find themselves somewhere in the same zip code as they were in 2023 and 2024, a couple of points away from the Western Conference playoff picture on American Thanksgiving.
Edmonton is an 11-10-5 team, yet somehow sits just four points south of the Pacific Division ahead of Anaheim. A two-time Stanley Cup finalist, the Oilers have yet to win three games in a row, have the worst team save percentage in the NHL (0.877) and rank 30th in goals allowed per game at 3.58.
However, all of this can be mitigated by going against Minnesota, Seattle, Winnipeg, Buffalo and Detroit.
“When the world falls apart, you look at things and they are still within our reach,” the veteran centrist said. Adam Enrique. “I know you media guys love Thanksgiving and stuff like that. But it's there and we know it.”
With goaltending under scrutiny, Stuart Skinner scored a shutout on the road in Seattle on Saturday, the latest in a growing number of solid wins that should have sparked change but never materialized.
In that game, Edmonton's power play finished 2-for-2 and the penalty kill was a perfect 6-for-6.
If ever there was a springboard game, this was it.
“We had a few of these projects that we want to start,” Enrique said. “It was a complete game. Now, having been at home here for a while, we have to step on the gas.”
“It's a big, big challenge for us,” Hyman reiterated, “to come home and get our game going at home. We're usually very good at home. It's a fun building to play in and we have the greatest fans, so it's easy for us to come to the rink every day and play.”
“We're going to have to work hard to get back on track.”
It was always like this around this time of year.
Are you wondering how long the Edmonton Oilers can keep going like this?
