Oilers' Draisaitl says: 'We want to win,' team must learn from 'tough times'

EDMONTON — We rarely ever get the true explanation. Not the fans, not the media. 

The Edmonton Oilers see their season come to an abrupt end — whether it was to Winnipeg, Colorado, Chicago or Vegas — and it’s always the same thing. 

In the short window we get to talk with players after the series, it’s too soon, too disappointing to really dig into what went wrong. And when they return next fall it’s old news. Everyone is “looking forward.” 

But last spring’s loss to Vegas wasn’t just any loss. Edmonton held a lead in each of the six games, but lost. Then they watched the Golden Knights roll through Dallas and Florida en route to their first Stanley Cup. 

“I think that's series could (have gone) any direction,” Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl said on Thursday, after a captain's skate at Rogers Place. “But it didn't, and that's a fact.” 

So, what happened then? What really happened, to an Oilers team that was locked in a 2-2 series, on the road in Game 5 and leading 2-1 with six minutes remaining in the second period? 

“We just didn't play our best hockey when it mattered most. Not consistently enough, at least,” said Draisaitl. “In the long run, the last two games, they just outplayed us a little bit in some little areas. A couple of penalties here…” 

“It was a collection of little mistakes that add up, to lose the series,” said captain Connor McDavid, when asked on Wednesday at press conference for next month's Heritage Classic game. “Looking back, we're sitting there in Game 5, five minutes left in the second and in a real good place —  on the road and up by a goal. Feeling good about ourselves. And you find a way to be down two (goals) heading into the third period. 

“It's a collection of mistakes throughout the series that add up to a series loss. Something that we’ll fix throughout the course of year.” 

These are the little things that everyone always talks about. The intangibles that successful teams master, and others simply never figure out. 

They’re negligible, tiny little details — many of them mental — but they’re akin to the door latch on a luxury plane: a tiny part that can bring the whole million-dollar project to a halt. 

“Tons of things, you know?” Draisaitl said. “Penalties. Sticking within the system — which I'm not saying that we didn't we always do. We're good that way. But sometimes it's just learning how not to lose the game instead of learning how to win it. 

“I think we're the best team in the league at really, clearly winning a game. I think we're not so great (when it comes to) finding ways to lose games,” he said. “It's just a little bit of maturity. You know, sometimes you’ve got to go through these pains and tough times to learn from them.” 

Back in the 2020 bubble here in Edmonton, we watched the Colorado Avalanche reach Game 7 of Round 2 in the Western Conference bubble against the Dallas Stars, a series they were supposed to win. But the Avs had some injuries, were down to their third-string goalie, and some cat named Joel Kiviranta had the game of his life with a hat trick in the Game 7 win — including the OT winner. 

Nathan MacKinnon was devastated. We’ll never forget the look on his face. 

“We felt like we were outplaying them in overtime, it was coming,” he said over Zoom, from five floors beneath us at Rogers Place. “Just got hemmed in, the boys got gassed, and they made a nice play. 

“There are no moral victories here. We came here to win. We didn’t get the job done.” 

Edmonton, too, has exhausted their moral victories. They’ve been upset by Chicago and Winnipeg, been vanquished by a better opponent in Colorado and fumbled a series they had in some measure of control against Vegas — all in the past four seasons. 

If this is the road that must be travelled by every eventual Cup winner, we asked McDavid if his team covered a long stretch of that road in the 2023 playoffs? 

“I certainly feel that way, yeah,” McDavid agreed. “The old saying is, you’ve got to lose to learn how to win. And as painful as that is, I feel that is true. 

“The majority of the teams that win, they go through those things. It's very painful, but we've gone through a lot of steps and learned a lot of lessons. It's up to us to put those to good use.” 

That makes this season “Cup or bust,” as Draisaitl so famously put it last season. “It’s an interesting quote,” he mused on Thursday, before pausing to choose his words more carefully than he had last May. 

“We want to win,” he said, finally. “I mean, you guys write about it every day. We say it almost every day. We want to win a Stanley Cup here. There's no doubt about that. 

“But there are (31) other teams trying to do the same thing. We’re not the only team here,” he continued. “There's going to be some ups and downs, but we’ve got the group in here to do it. We’ve got the right mindset, we've learned a lot over the last couple of years, (so)  get off to a good start and that's the most important thing.”