From day one, the lack of cohension made this \u2018average\u2019 Oilers season concerning and weird<\/p>\n
Last Saturday, after the Game 3<\/a> loss against the Ducks, Edmonton Oilers<\/a> head coach Kris Knoblauch was asked a question<\/a> about his team\u2019s inconsistent performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the players saying the right things and despite the Ducks being a beatable opponent, this interaction told me this team wasn\u2019t likely to come back. <\/p>\n Mark Spector: \u201cIt seems like you\u2019ve been searching for your game. It\u2019s been a season of searching. Couldn\u2019t find it early, found it around Christmas, lost it again, found it after the Olympic break, playoffs start you\u2019re looking for it again. Why do you think that is?\u00a0<\/p>\n Kris Knoblauch: \u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of thoughts about that. If any of them are correct\u2026um, I dunno. Just\u2026having the\u2026nah, I don\u2019t think I have an answer for ya today.\u201d<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t a new question from Oilers reporters, of course, but Knoblauch\u2019s mind was trying to find a way to couch the information, like he usually does. In the end, he said it all without saying it. That would come later.\u00a0<\/p>\n Well, after a tired, injured, and overall lifeless hockey team couldn\u2019t make the right adjustments, kill penalties, or play a brand of playoff hockey, losing in six games<\/a> to a younger, faster, green hockey team on Thursday night \u2013 everyone said it.\u00a0To borrow Knoblauch or Connor McDavid\u2019s words<\/a> in the funereal post-game interviews, the regular season was \u201cmonotonous\u201d or a \u201cformality\u201d for a team that was \u201caverage\u201d all year long.\u00a0Hey, I don\u2019t blame them, either. My expectations for this team\u2019s ceiling<\/a> in 2025-26 were always low.\u00a0Florida made everyone believe that going to three straight Stanley Cup Finals ain\u2019t a big deal. Don\u2019t forget, Florida and Tampa Bay are outliers in the league since the NHL expanded beyond 21 teams. As I pointed out in November<\/a>, winning a Stanley Cup after losing two in a row hasn\u2019t been done since the 1950s, a time when the league was just six teams, not 32.\u00a0<\/p>\n The volume of tough hockey this team played, the mental and physical toll, was too much to bear. Add in the electric shock of an Olympic competition, the truncated schedule, and then another soul-crushing loss for McDavid, the result of this season isn\u2019t surprising.\u00a0<\/p>\n Edmonton was banged up<\/a> and covered in scar tissue. That\u2019s not an excuse: it\u2019s the reality of the situation. They didn\u2019t have it.\u00a0The sins of the series<\/p>\n However, losing is one thing. How you lose is another. While the Ducks played fine, if you surfed the TV to other first rounds, it was a pillow fight. Right up until the final buzzer, even with injuries, fatigue, all of it, this was a winnable series.\u00a0<\/p>\n How the Oilers lost not just renews, but amplifies all the old and very relevant conversations about this team\u2019s faults, serious ones that require attention if Edmonton wants to compete for the holy grail again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There will be plenty of time to pick through them all. The Darnell Nurse<\/a> contract. The goaltending. The timeline.<\/p>\n For now, I\u2019ll say this.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the big picture, the Oilers struggle to learn lessons from season\u2019s past. Despite a pedigree to participate in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals, those lessons, the mental toughness, the commitment to a defensive game, all have to be rediscovered each season.<\/p>\n They can\u2019t structure their way to victories in the regular season, or won\u2019t play in them, or stack their game throughout the year. It\u2019s just hot and cold. The Oilers have come back in series plenty of times, but isn\u2019t it concerning how often they have to? They need to socked in the mouth and taste their own blood before they can get involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n The players have to take some of the onus.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the plan<\/a>?<\/p>\n This series is a healthy reminder that one aspect of a team\u2019s overall game can completely sink your chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oilers killed 8-out-of-16 power plays, a ghastly 50 per cent, which is a common script in their runs of old \u2013 but for their opponents. If there\u2019s any solace for a Los Angeles Kings fan, and there\u2019s almost none after Ken Holland\u2019s exit interviews, they saw the shoe on the other foot for the Oilers, outplaying their opponent five-on-five, but the special teams play so tilted it sinks them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n