The game had been over for 20 minutes. The Edmonton Oilers had scored into an empty net to defeat the Chicago Blackhawks 5-3. Kailer Yamamoto, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had taken their turns to skate out as the three stars.
When head coach Dave Tippett walked in for his post-game press conference, there was no expression on his face that suggested the Oilers had just won their second most important game of the season.
To me, considering the loss of Connor McDavid from the lineup for two to three weeks and the Murderers Row run laying ahead in the next four games on the schedule, it was nothing less than that. The only game I’d put ahead of it was the Battle of Alberta win in Calgary.
Tuesday’s was a win that a fan might love but was so flawed in so many areas, defensively, that a coach might not. So to begin proceedings, I posed the question. With many coaches, by the time the season gets down to a stretch drive with 10 or so games to go and their team is still in a battle to make the playoffs, the philosophy changed dramatically from the rest of the season.
It’s only mid-February. There are still 26 games to go, not 10. But considering McDavid’s absence and the three-games-in-four-days road trip to play Tampa, Florida and Carolina, followed by a first-game-back-from-a-road-trip scenario against the Boston Bruins, does Tippett adopt the philosophy I speak of this early?
Does he tell the players no matter how good, how bad or how ugly they just played, whether they won, lost or salvaged a losing point, to park that game and move right on to the next one regardless?
“First of all, I thought we competed hard. I had a feeling that we’d come out and play hard tonight. Missing Connor is a big piece out of our lineup, but I thought our guys would step up and compete hard and we did,” said the new head coach. “We got on our heels and didn’t make plays in the third period. But Smitty (goalie Mike Smith) was really good and we competed hard, no matter what. We made a few mistakes, but I liked the way we competed.”
Smith stopped all 18 shots in the final frame.
“The players have the mindset that we’ve got ourselves in a good race here and every team is going through some adversity, some with injuries, and we’re no different than that. It doesn’t mean we can’t compete hard and find ways to win,” Tippett said. “That’s what it’s going to be for us from now on. Every game is going to be a different game. I just told the players: ‘We found a way to win this game. Let’s go into Tampa and find a way to win that game. It might be our power play. It might be a penalty kill. It might be great goaltending. We might need to just muck it up and just make it ugly and win.’
“Somehow, we have to keep finding ways to keep getting points. That’s the attitude of our team right now. I’d be happy winning 2-1, 1-0, 4-3, 5-3 … it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that we win.”
With the win, the Oilers moved within one point of Vancouver with a game in hand on the Canucks. There might be four straight losses in a row ahead and if that happened, they’d fall out of a playoff position.
Tippett has to find a way to bring the team back alive for the return of McDavid.
This night he resisted to temptation to have Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins centre their own lines, mostly because of the magic they’ve been making with a now 10-3-2 record since he put them with freshly called-up Yamamoto, from Bakersfield, on New Year’s Eve.
“The thing about Yamo is that he keeps plays alive. He’s on pucks. He’s relentless. He chases pucks down and gets opportunities,” said Tippett.
Yamamoto scored two goals. Nugent-Hopkins had a goal and two assists. Draisaitl had the empty-net goal and three assists for a four-point game in moving eight points ahead of McDavid in the NHL scoring race.
Draisaitl, in the 15 games since New Year’s Eve, has gone 10-19-29 (plus-10), Yamamoto 7-7-14 (plus-12) and Nugent-Hopkins 8-13-21 (plus-10).
The worry was, and probably still is, with teams now able to put their top defensive pairing on the ice against them and focus on shutting them down, the production of the line would drop dramatically.
It didn’t against the Blackhawks, who are now in definite danger of sliding out of contention.
The other worry was the league’s No. 1 power play would become dormant without McDavid. It didn’t, as the Oilers produced two power-play goals.
Tippett ended up creating a second line with Zack Kassian, Josh Archibald and Riley Sheahan and they, too, came through, scoring the first goal at 1:17.
“They set the attitude with the work ethic. They set the tone of our team with a commitment to doing everything hard. We wanted to throw pucks at the net and keep people going to the net. In the first minute, they went out and got that done to get us a goal. They’re good veteran players and guys who understand how we’re going to have to play to be successful.”
To borrow the title from McDavid’s documentary, ‘Whatever it takes.’
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @ByTerryJones
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
