The Oilers have given themselves a long-awaited chance at redemption
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The Edmonton Oilers are on the verge of rewriting history.
On Monday, they have a chance to become just the second NHL team to ever come back from being down 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Final, when they face the Florida Panthers in Game 7 down in Sunrise, Fla.
The thing is, the Oilers could just as easily end up reliving history instead of rewriting it, while playing in Game 7 for the Stanley Cup for the second time in 18 years.
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As for what happened last time around …
Well, the Oilers didn’t quite get the job done, falling to the Carolina Hurricanes 3-1 on that fateful day, June 19, 2006.
“You said it, the job’s not done,” said Oilers forward Zach Hyman. “I think it’s a great story, but you need to finish it.
“Everyone will forget if you don’t finish it. That’s the key, everybody remembers the winners, so it’s great to give (the fans) a moment like that, but I think they’re waiting for a bigger moment.”
Make no mistake, the fans around here remember all too well coming oh so close to the Cup the last time the Oilers were playing for it — something that was readily taken for granted back in the glory days of the 1980s, when they played in six finals in eight years and won five of them.
The last one came in 1990, before finally returning for a chance to win it again 16 years later. And 18 years after that, the Oilers have given themselves a long-awaited chance at redemption.
So, yeah, some remember the sting of losing Game 7, even if it felt like a lifetime ago.
And this current crop of Oilers has a choice: they can either think about how long it’s been since their fans celebrated a championship or they can focus on the task at hand and try to close that gap for them.
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“It’s just another elimination game where our backs were against the wall,” Hyman said of Friday’s 5-1 win in Game 6 at Rogers Place. “Obviously, the crowd was unbelievable in getting us started and I thought we were comfortable playing in these games. We’ve proven we can play in them and played in a bunch of them.”
In seven elimination games over the post-season, where either the Oilers or their opponent were in danger of being bumped from the playoff bracket, Edmonton is a perfect 7-0 with 4.6 goals for and 1.7 goals against, the last three games of which have come in a row in the Stanley Cup Final.
And on Monday, they will look to make it eight straight.
“We’ve been in this position before,” Hyman said. “You try your best not to sit back, you try your best to push.
“You play to be in the Stanley Cup Final and there’s no better game in sports than a Game 7, and when it’s in the Stanley Cup Final, you can’t ask for a bigger opportunity as a player. And as a fan of hockey, everybody is excited to watch it.”
Just imagine what it’s like to be playing in it, especially for some of the longer-serving members of the Oilers dressing room.
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“We’ve had a few cracks at winning playoff runs, but there’s been no satisfaction,” said Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse, who has reached the post-season six times in his 10 years with the club that drafted him. “There’s no satisfaction until we’re all done.
“There’s no momentum from game to game. When that puck drops in Game 7, it’s just one game and you want to make the most of the opportunities. When that puck drops, everything seems to reset.”
Then again, heading into Game 7 you’d rather be the team that won the last three games than the one that won the first three.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter too much how you get there, but of course, we’ve taken the hardest route,” said forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the longest continuous serving Oilers player at 13 years and counting. “But it’s been a lot of fun.
“In the Stanley Cup Final, you have a chance every night to win a game and that’s kind of been the mindset since we’d been 0-3.”
Sure they’ve been stringing wins together in the series, but the flip side is they also remain one game away from losing it all.
“It shows the kind of group we have in here,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “You’ve got to believe in each other. You’ve got to have a ton of character and if a couple guys aren’t feeling great about their game or too confident, somebody else is going to pick them up and step up in big moments.
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“That’s kind of what we’ve seen all season. We’ve got an amazing opportunity here, and we’re going to put our best foot forward on Monday.”
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