“That’s not (bleeping) good enough!. It’s the Final! DIG THE (BLEEP) IN!! RIGHT (BLEEPING) NOW!! Whatever the (bleep) you have!” — Connor McDavid, after Game 2 of last year’s Final.
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — So, here we are. It’s dig-in time.
Or as the Oilers’ captain might say, “DIG THE (BLEEP) IN!!” time.
As the most important game of this Stanley Cup Final approaches — the game that will dictate whether we bring this series back to Edmonton on Friday in a rocket ship or a hearse — the Edmonton Oilers are somehow still in search of their game.
Still wondering how to turn the other cheek against a team that pokes your goalie until you are forced to make them stop, that employs more PHDs in the art of frustration than perhaps any other team. It seems impossible to avoid playing the Panthers’ game, at times, when they dump it in your lap and throw it in your face.
Shift after shift. Night after exasperating night.
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How to get Florida chasing Edmonton’s game, a style that’s been effective enough to get them here for two straight springs.
“That’s the battle,” began Mattias Ekholm, sweat still dripping from his beard after a spirited, high-paced practice Tuesday in Ft. Lauderdale. “That’s been pretty clear in these three games: whoever manages to play their game a larger volume of the game usually (wins). So far, they’ve managed to do that better in two games and we did it better in Game 1.
“In that regard, I don’t think we have gotten up to the standard where we want to be yet. I think it’s coming. We need to raise our game.”
The night before, after that embarrassing 6-1 loss, McDavid had lamented, “We never got to our game. I don’t think our best has shown up all series long, but it’s coming.”
On Tuesday, a scheduled off day that suddenly turned into a full-on practice in the hours after their Game 3 performance, McDavid took to the ice early and worked on his scoring touch.
Circling, circling, circling the zone and wiring wrist shots at and past his goalie, a look on his face that made it clear he wasn’t just out for a Tuesday twirl.
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McDavid does not have a goal in three games of this Final, while his childhood teammate Sam Bennett and 4 Nations buddy Brad Marchand each have four.
“That’s not (bleeping) good enough. It’s the Final.”
So the mission on Tuesday was to move on from Game 3. Have a skate, put in a good day, and distance the psyche from what happened here on Monday.
“We’re one win away from having a best-of-three with two home games. There are a lot of positives,” said Ekholm. “Sometimes you get a little lost in that when you lose a game.”
Back home, folks are emotional.
The text lines on the radio call-in shows are berating the referees, Stu Skinner’s game, or suggesting various forms of bodily harm to be inflicted upon Bennett and/or Matthew Tkachuk.
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Here in Florida, a veteran team put on its bravest face, an older bunch who have ridden this roller coaster a time or two, and knows that the more you stress out, the sooner the ride will come to an end.
“Well, you can’t dwell on things. You can’t change the outcome after the game has ended,” reasoned the eldest Oiler, Corey Perry. “So you look at what you didn’t do right, or can improve on, take some positives out of it or whatever. But you have to flush it. The next one’s the biggest one. That’s how we think about it.
“Yeah, we lost the game. Get ready for the next one. Move on.”
He’d be an awful radio host, with that attitude.
But on a team that came unhinged in the garbage-time minutes of Game 3, the sober second thought on Tuesday centred around playing a Game 4 that more closely resembles the brand of hockey we’ve watched throughout this Oilers run through the West.
“We’ve got to control our penalties in the first. We can’t take four. It’s just too much,” Ekholm said. “They’re having their best players on the ice way more than we have our top guys on there, because we’re obviously killing (penalties) too much. The stick infractions, the penalties in the first, we’ve got to clean up.
“Whatever happened in the third, I don’t play too much into that.”
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This was a team that reeled off three shutouts in a stretch of four games between Rounds 2 and 3. Yet they’ve allowed 14 goals in three games of this Final.
“We have to strive for that type of game,” said Leon Draisaitl. “We have to strive for a tight-checking game, not a lot of power plays going their way, defending well, low-event. That’s what we’re looking to do.
“That’s what we’ve done for most of the playoffs and that’s our first step.”
Getting a lead wouldn’t hurt either, something the Oilers have not had in six-and-a-half periods of this Final.
In the last two post-seasons, the Oilers are 14-2 in Games 4-7. They won Games 4, 5 and 6 against these same Panthers a year ago.
It’s time to be that team again.
Time, as their captain said, to “Dig the (bleep) in!”
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