Oilers confident they can respond after Game 1 collapse – Sportsnet.ca

VANCOUVER – This is when you find out what your team is all about.

Game 2.

A roster full of players who didn’t play anywhere near their potential in Game 1. A series that isn’t out of control… yet.

If your team is championship caliber, they looked each other in the eye in the postgame locker room, said a few things, and they’ll deliver in Game 2.

“I’m not going to go into details,” Corey Perry said, “but there were some things (two minutes, maybe) last night after the game that we talked about. Then we move on and everyone knows what that message means and what that message is.”

So let’s talk about that message.

“It’s not about what kids say to each other. It’s more about what they do, how they act, how they play,” began Perry, who was brought to this Edmonton Oilers clubhouse for a reason.

Because he is a winner.

Olympic gold, Stanley Cups, World Youth gold… You can’t be a part of all those teams, suit up and play alongside all those fantastic players, and not accumulate the recipe for the secret sauce that every Stanley Cup winning team has. .

“I always go back to when we won the Cup in 2007 with that team in Anaheim,” Perry began. “We had Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Teemu Selanne. Those guys, when they had a tough night, you knew they were going to be beasts the next night. “You could see it, you could feel it, you could feel it.”

On this team, those players are Connor McDavid (no shots in Game 1), Darnell Nurse (zero hits, minus-3) and, if he can play, Leon Draisaitl, who skipped Thursday’s practice with an unknown injury.

And, of course, goalie Stuart Skinner, who could have salvaged a win from a mediocre Oilers effort with a few more saves on Wednesday against the Vancouver Canucks.

In a locker room full of professionals, no one needs to remind anyone of a bad performance. In fact, an NHL locker room is the polar opposite of what many might think. A place where guilt is overwhelmed by the process of turning teammates into the players they need to be for a team to win.

In a word, they are antisocial networks.

“As teammates, you’re there to cheer your teammates on,” Zach Hyman said. “You want to get the best out of them and thinking about past performance is of no use. So it’s wake up, wash it off, we have to win four and they have to win three. It’s not the end of the world.”

Embedded in their seventh playoff series in the last three springs, this is the only clear advantage the Oilers have over the Canucks: experience.

They have lost five of those Game 1s in the last three years and won three of those series. This way they know the process and have a roadmap that they have successfully traveled several times before.

“Guys understand how to knock it out, how to be better and how to get the best version of themselves,” Hyman said. “If you’re not able to respond, you probably won’t play for long.”

While the Internet buries the Cody Ceci-Nurse duo for being on the ice when some very suspicious goals beat Skinner, there are no accusations within the walls of Edmonton’s locker room or video rooms.

It has to be that way, on a healthy and adequate NHL team.

“If the goalkeeper doesn’t see it well, how can we help you? If the D’s are not breaking the disc correctly, how can we help you? If the forwards cannot withstand the pressure of the outside zone, how can we help them? Hyman listed. “It is a collective question regarding how we can help each other.

“This game is very much a team game, and even if there are individual mistakes, a lot of times people don’t realize if the team is picking up on each other. So it’s about how do we get the best version of each other?

These are the intangibles that many people on the outside make fun of, to which no one on the inside agrees.

“It all starts with being a brotherhood in this locker room. Lift people up when they’re down,” Perry instructs. “You play 82 games with the same guys, over and over again. You’re bound to have a bad game here and there. But you are expected to respond and you are judged on your response.”

Then there is judgment.

But not because of a mistake or a bad night. About how you respond.

That’s what separates the good players (good teammates) from the bad ones.

“I’ll keep coming back to that: You’re judged by your response,” Perry promised. “You pretty much have to find a way to be better.

Last night we weren’t very good. We were good at some points, but we weren’t very good.

“We know it in the room. Nobody has to tell you.”