EDMONTON — So, the Edmonton Oilers lost their captain and best player. Join the club.
The Calgary Flames are making their way without Mark Giordano and Travis Hamonic. Vancouver is without Brock Boeser, and Elias Pettersson is dinged up.
Morgan Rielly hasn’t played for Toronto since Jan. 12. Arizona has managed to stay in the fight despite the fact their No. 1 goalie Darcy Kuemper hasn’t played a game since Dec. 19.
And the Oilers still have the leading scorer in the NHL in Leon Draisaitl, who this season has amassed many of those points playing on a separate line from Connor McDavid.
This injury — a quad injury that the Oilers say will cost McDavid two to three weeks, or seven to 10 games — isn’t a small thing. But it can’t be something that drops the Oilers out of the playoff race.
They simply cannot be that fragile.
"First of all, it IS a big deal. He’s the best player in the world," Draisaitl said. "If he’s missing on any team, you know it hurts. We’re not going to find a way around that.
"But, we have to come in with the right mindset, and find our own game away from him. Without him. It’s going to be a tight-checking group in here that’s going to defend like crazy and try to win games that way. I think we have the guys in here to do that. I’m very confident in this group."
There will have to be more 2-1 wins around here in the next few weeks than 5-4 wins. But it’s mid-February. It should be that way anyhow.
"For sure," said Tuesday night’s starting goalie Mike Smith. "Tipp (head coach Dave Tippett) has been preaching that all season. When it really turned around for us was when we buckled down defensively, and played an important, 200-foot game. The more we understand that that is what it takes to win close hockey games, the more we’ve grasped that and gotten points because of it.
"This team is figuring out how to win close games. It’s not always going to be a shootout — we don’t want it to be that. The better we can play defensively and as a five-man unit, the better chance we have of being a real good team down the stretch here and be a tough team in the playoffs."
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The good news on McDavid is this injury is said to be simply a soft-tissue quad injury above McDavid’s left knee. Nothing structural that could require surgery, the Oilers assure.
"It’s totally unrelated to the injury he had this summer," said general manager Ken Holland. "The good news about having the MRI is that not only did we see the quad injury, but the doctors had an opportunity to look at the injury from this summer and everything looks great."
Will this affect how Holland acts at the coming trade deadline?
"That’s a good question," he mused when asked.
As they drop the puck against the Chicago Blackhawks Tuesday evening, the Oilers find themselves in second place in a wide-open Pacific Division — three points behind first-place Vancouver, yet just two points removed from missing the playoffs altogether.
Holland’s club has games in hand on everyone around them, and the sense is that this injury will not change his deadline approach. If his team stays in the hunt, he was always going to augment his lineup with a left-winger for McDavid, or a third-line centre, without going so far as to part with a top prospect or a first-round draft pick.
If his team nose-dives, he may pull back. But if they hang around in the Pacific, which seems more likely, it is hard to think that Holland would suddenly see his Oilers as a Cup contender and start dealing away first-round picks or prospects like Evan Bouchard.
In the meantime, the Oilers players are no different than their colleagues in Arizona, Calgary or Columbus, which just lost key defenceman Seth Jones for eight to 10 weeks with a fractured ankle. They’ll suck it up like everyone else, and soldier on for a couple of weeks without having the best player on the ice every single night.
"He’s so tough, having going through that long recovery he went through in the summer," said Oilers assistant captain Darnell Nurse. "I’m sure he didn’t want to be in this position, but it could have been worse.
"It’s a challenge. Each and every one of us have to pick up a little more because that’s how much he means to our team. There can’t be an emotional sag.
"It can’t be, ‘Oh, God, here it goes.’ We just have to play. It’s as simple as that."
You can’t be a one-man team. There simply has to be more here than a roster that can’t win without No. 97.
"The challenge for the veteran guys in this locker room is to make sure we rise to the challenge," Smith said. "Not taking it as doomsday in here."
