Oilers Believe They Are More Resilient as Playoffs Approach

The Edmonton Oilers have 14 regular season games remaining before what looks almost certain to be a playoff date with the Winnipeg Jets. However, the Oilers are still dealing with the uncertainty of this unique COVID season, and yet again saw their path change on Thursday. The NHL officially postponed Edmonton’s game against the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night, meaning the Oilers will go a week between contests.

It’s far from ideal, but it’s the ‘new normal’ in a season and a year unlike any other. The Oilers are dealing with it just like every other team in the league. Good teams don’t make excuses, and good teams make the best out of every situation. It’s inconvenient, but it should make the Oilers a tougher group.

“Probably (makes them) a little more resilient,” Dave Tippett said about dealing with all the changes on Thursday. “You’re dealing with things and as you go through things, you deal with them and find out how you dealt with them. We talked about this earlier in the year that this could be the case. There could be a lot of ups and downs, schedule changes and so much uncertainty through the whole year that you almost prepare yourself before it. It’s easy to talk about it before and if you don’t have to go through it, then you don’t worry about it. But when you talk about it and then you actually are confronted with it, now you have to put what you said into place. That’s what we’re trying to do. You don’t let it affect you.”

Of course, while the Oilers say they try to not let it affect them, it has. The club practiced on Thursday completely unsure if they would fly to Vancouver. Later in the afternoon, they found out they would instead practice at home on Friday and then fly to Winnipeg.

Earlier this season, the Oilers were dressed for warmups in Montreal when the game was postponed, and had to sit in the city for three days after the entire series was postponed. They’ve also seen their regular season extended, and will face a grind heading into the playoffs.

“There have been some times when you can see it does affect your team,” Tippett continued. “Hopefully, you can go past those situations. Our guys have really dug into about this is what we have to do right now, how we have to prepare and whoever we’re going to play next or however the schedule pans out, we have to be prepared to play well as a team. I like the focus of our guys. There is a lot of uncertainty of where you’re going but for us, just tell us where we should be and we’re going to show up and play.”