The Edmonton Oilers play the biggest game of their season on Friday night at home.
That statement is not hyperbole. It’s a fact.
The Oilers enter Friday night’s Game 3 down 2-0 in their opening-round series against the LA Kings. Edmonton fought tooth and nail in Game 1, losing a heartbreaker. But Game 2 was a completely different story. The lopsided loss highlighted just how much the Oilers seemed outplayed.
But that’s the past. The time has come now for the Oilers to play desperate hockey. I know that’s something virtually all sports writers say in just about every sport. But the fact of the matter is that Edmonton is down to its last couple of bullets.
A loss on Friday night means they’re down to the last one.
One more bullet before facing a boatload of questions the entire summer. A summer filled with lament and remorse about what could have been. Fans and the media will dissect every play and every call, boiling down the Oilers’ season to a missed penalty call, a hit post, or a botched line change.
Honestly, a hockey season is the sum of millions upon millions of individual events. While those events have led to the Kings’ 2-0 lead, those same events can conflate to bring the Oilers back into the mix.
A win changes everything. It puts the Oilers back in the series with a fighting chance to win. A loss pretty much opens a gashing wound that will need a miraculous turnaround to save the Oilers from an early summer after coming oh so close to the Stanley Cup just one year ago.
Edmonton Oilers are out of excuses
The Edmonton Oilers are out of excuses heading into Game 3
There isn’t anything out there that can justify the position they’re in. The Kings have taken advantage of their mistakes and inconsistency. That’s led to the 2-0 lead. I suppose we can nit-pick where things have gone wrong.
For example, we can point to Darnell Nurse going pointless in the first two games. Or that Stuart Skinner has a 6.11 GAA while Calvin Pickard has a 6.32 GAA of his own. We could even argue that Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl only have seven points between them in two games.
Sure, there’s plenty to focus on in order to dissect what happened in the first two games. But there’s no sense in beating a dead horse. The Oilers must rally behind their home crowd and pull off the biggest win of their season.
Win and play another day. It’s that simple.
A loss, while incredibly meaningful to the LA Kings and their fans, would have a devastating ripple effect this summer.
So, we can hopefully avoid all the drama that would come with an early playoff exit, and we can focus on meeting the winner of what has been an interesting series between the Minnesota Wild and the Vegas Golden Knights.