EDMONTON — With injuries mounting for the Oilers as fast as the early season losses, Todd McLellan found himself saying what any coach would say, as he stood behind a podium after the morning skate.
Injuries aren’t something to mope about, he stressed. In fact, they represent opportunity.
Yeah, that’s it. Opportunity.
“Individuals can elevate their play, take more responsibility on… Be more productive,” the Edmonton head coach said. “The other thing that can happen is, players come up, they get an opportunity to play and you find them. They end up taking jobs away from players who didn’t elevate their game during the injury process.”
Prescient.
Hours later, after his club had been led to an epic come from behind victory over the best team in the National Hockey League — overcoming an early 3-0 deficit to beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 — McLellan stayed on theme.
“The coaching staff, we don’t care who wears the jersey,” he said. “As long as we’ve got a good group of 20 playing.”
As has been the case for years here in Edmonton, the bigger problem by far in 2015-16 isn’t all the first-round picks on this roster. It’s the poor acquisitions that the former management group had made; the veterans who were supposed to provide safe harbour for the kids, but instead turned out to be nothing but anchors.
On Thursday night, the first and last of Edmonton’s goals came from Leon Draisaitl, 20, who had awoken at 3:45 a.m. in AHL Bakersfield and not slept a wink all day long. Another goal came off the stick of a 16-game defenceman named Brandon Davidson, who played more minutes on this night than NHL vets Mark Fayne and Andrew Ference.
Darnell Nurse, 20, was on the ice late protecting a lead, and even Nail Yakupov was spotted in the defensive zone in the final minute with Carey Price on the bench, perhaps a career first.
“Always nice to have that type of trust,” said Nurse, who played 19:02 and had a point. He watched as Draisaitl stole the show, scoring his second with 62 ticks left on the clock on a lovely feed from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
“Might be because of his roommate’s great cooking in Bakersfield,” joked Nurse, who of course was that roommate in the minors.
Across the way the Canadiens rued a game they had left for dead after scoring three times in the first period. Truly, Montreal had no reason to think otherwise, the way this Oilers team had opened up the game.
“We think we’re untouchable when we get a lead like that, and then we leave our goalie stranded,” seethed Habs captain Max Pacioretty. “I’m a little embarrassed, but we have a game (tonight in Calgary) and we have to prove this was a fluke.
“We got fancy, overconfident. We stopped putting pucks on the net. Our game is to put pucks on the net, forecheck, win the 50-50 battles and that wasn’t there after the first period. That’s on all of us.”
So often, when Edmonton wins, it’s on the back of a highlight reel game by one of its speedy young stars. An unrepeatable event that, in a nine-year run of playoff misses, clearly doesn’t get repeated often enough.
True, you won’t erase a 3-0 deficit very often. But in Edmonton, simply learning to carry the fight through 60 minutes is a sign of progress.
“Back to that theme of holding our hand a little longer (before cashing in the chips). Trying to be proud players,” said McLellan, whose former team in San Jose knew that they simply had to throw some adversity Edmonton’s way and on most nights the Oilers would fold like a tent.
Now McLellan is here, and he vows it will cease.
“We stuck with it, and held a very good team to very few chances in the last two periods. Checked our way to a win,” he said, by our recollection for the first time since taking the job. “It should be something we can build on. Or, we can take our foot off the gas and start over. We’ll take that test on Saturday.”
Versus Calgary. On Hockey Night in Canada.
Which team will the Flames get?
