{"id":606986,"date":"2026-04-16T01:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T01:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/606986\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T01:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T01:58:09","slug":"time-for-seasoned-oilers-to-hit-playoff-gear-against-hapless-canucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/606986\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for seasoned Oilers to hit playoff gear against hapless Canucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014 The Edmonton Oilers<\/a>\u2019 second season as a recovering Stanley Cup finalist has been\u2026 well, let\u2019s just say they\u2019ve taken it one day at a time.<\/p>\n

They’ve learned how to get to April 15 in a comfortable playoff position, without expending too much energy along the way. How to maintain the level in everyone\u2019s personal game to stay at or near the top of the Pacific, then find a team game when needed after the Olympic break \u2014\u00a0but not necessarily before.<\/p>\n

How to be good enough, while saving your best for last.<\/p>\n

Because if there’s one thing they know, it’s that you can\u2019t play playoff hockey in December. Not if you plan on playing it in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe expectations are to win the Stanley Cup,\u201d Zach Hyman<\/a> said Wednesday. \u201cWe lose in the final, we lose in the first round \u2014 we\u2019re going to be pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re in the middle of a Stanley Cup window, it\u2019s all about the 16 wins from April to June. The 82 games before that, they\u2019re crab cakes: the appetizer before the main course.<\/p>\n

And the more playoff hockey you\u2019ve played, the more that becomes ingrained in the DNA of an NHL team.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayoff experience,\u201d began Hyman. \u201cWhen you don’t have it, you don’t really think it’s that important. And when you do, you realize it is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n

Expound on that, could you?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re a young kid and it’s your first playoff game, you\u2019re taken aback. Everything’s different,\u201d Hyman, who will be in the lineup Thursday against the Canucks, explained. \u201cPlayers play differently. Everything’s faster. Every play matters. It’s just a different, different game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s why you see teams like Florida, who had 98 points last year, and then they turned it on. They were the best team by quite a (distance) in the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, in the end, two games better than these Oilers.<\/p>\n

Edmonton has been a 100-plus point team for four straight seasons. As we arrive at Game 82 Thursday in Edmonton, a point earned against the hapless Vancouver Canucks \u2014\u00a0and with playoff seeding at stake, can you envisage a world in which Edmonton doesn\u2019t win by two or three? \u2014\u00a0the Oilers will close out the 2025-26 season with 92 or 93 points, good for (at least) second place in the pillow-fight Pacific.<\/p>\n

Frankly, had Leon Draisaitl and then Hyman not been injured late in the season, the Oilers would likely have two or three more points and be home and cooled atop the division. But really, who cares?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to put yourself in a position that you can be comfortable going into the playoffs, and obviously we’re not,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to win a game here. But at the same time, you still have the confidence that when you get in you can beat anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know this: from about 2008 to 2011, if those Canucks teams needed a late season victory over Edmonton to feather their playoff nest, we all would have bet the house that the Sedins et al would take both points from those inferior Oilers teams.<\/p>\n

Today, the skate is on the other foot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty confident,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cI mean, it’s kind of how we’ve been the whole time. It’s a big game for us. Every game we go into we’re confident that we can win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s game is, in fact, a chance to kick in a little muscle memory before the games start for real.<\/p>\n

There is a chance, should Vegas somehow lose in regulation Wednesday, that a win could give Edmonton first place. More importantly, if the tumblers fall the right way, there\u2019s a chance a regulation loss could send Edmonton down to Colorado for Game 1, with a slog through the Central ahead even if they pull off an improbable upset over the Avalanche.<\/p>\n

Simply winning and playing either Anaheim or Los Angeles makes the stakes high in Game 82, a nice rehearsal for the gut-wrenching games that lie ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of us, these last few years, we\u2019ve played a lot of hockey,\u201d said veteran Darnell Nurse<\/a>. \u201cI wouldn’t say (playoff hockey) is the same feeling as a regular-season game \u2014\u00a0it’s more amplified, the context of the game. But there’s a familiarity and comfort to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re closing in on that game, just in time for the games they\u2019ve been waiting for all season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis last week, we haven’t gotten all the results we wanted. But we played really well,\u201d assessed Nurse. “It’s on us to bring that again against Vancouver \u2014\u00a0the full package. Be able to create some more offence for our team, but not at the expense of our defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

If your game isn\u2019t at a point that makes a speed bump out of Vancouver \u2014 with this much on the line \u2014\u00a0then what\u2019s next doesn\u2019t really matter, does it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 The Edmonton Oilers\u2019 second season as a recovering Stanley Cup finalist has been\u2026 well, let\u2019s just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-606986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}