Edmonton Oilers aren’t the least bit surprised they’re making history

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To most everyone in the hockey world, what we are witnessing right now, the Edmonton Oilers rising from the dead, erasing a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Final and moving one game away from the greatest comeback of our lifetime, is nothing short of impossible.

Inside the Oilers locker room, however, the perspective is much different. Nobody is the least bit amazed at what’s happening. Nobody is marvelling at what they’ve accomplished.

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For starters, they know they haven’t accomplished anything yet. Not until they win Game 7 on Monday will the Oilers have done anything to celebrate.

Secondly, this is pretty much how they expected things to go. They expected to beat the favoured Florida Panthers. Maybe not from 3-0 down, but they felt they were the better team all series and it was just a question of how they’d get it done.

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Whether it was wrapping it up in five games, like it could have been if Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky hadn’t stolen two of the first three wins (the shots 32-18 and 35-23 for Edmonton in Games 1 and 3) or pulling off something that hadn’t been done since 1942, the Oilers believed all along that they could win this.

And now they can. They’re just one game away.

“It’s been fun,” grinned Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch, a guy who’s been so calm through all of this that you could take his pulse with a sun dial. “I know we surprised a lot of people, but I don’t think we surprised anybody in the room. We felt that we could do this.

“We felt, early in the series, down three, we felt that we could have won two of those. We thought we played well enough to win those and they didn’t go our way.”

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And now they are. Everything is going Edmonton’s way. The Oilers are winning a different way each night. They scored eight goals in Game 4. They held Florida to six shots through 30 minutes of Game 6. They won when McDavid had his virtuoso performances, and they won when the captain got held off the scoresheet while 11 other players, including their goalie, had points. They’ve killed 18 of 19 penalties, scored three times on the power play and twice short-handed.

So maybe the Oilers are right. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re knocking on history’s door.

“It’s hard to really put into words, there’s just a really strong feeling, a belief with this group and we’ve had it for a long time now,” said goaltender Stuart Skinner, who stood in the Oilers dressing room after their Game 3 loss and said if there is one team capable of running the table it was this one.

“No matter what situation we put ourselves in we always have that belief. I really do believe in this group and I’m sticking to those words — if anyone can do it, it’s the Oil.”

Knoblauch won’t have to say much to his team before Game 7 Monday night in Florida. He’ll just call on them to draw from a season’s worth of experience that only they can truly understand and ride that mental toughness one last time.

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“We’ve been through some difficult times,” said Knoblauch, whose team will face elimination for the sixth time in these playoffs Monday. “I have a lot of confidence in our team in how they responded and played in those games.

“When we got into the situation being down 3-0 to Florida, I saw a very confident group where there was no panic or desperation, just a very focused mentality.

“I like where our team is. I liked where they were when it was 3-0 and I definitely like where they are now.”

The Panthers aren’t liking this at all. They were so close to the Stanley Cup they could touch it and now it’s a full-scale collapse. They lost 8-1 in Game 4, fell behind 4-1 in Game 5 and lost 5-1 in Game 6.

How do you get beaten up like that for three straight games and not think that the footing you’ve been searching for is really quicksand?

“I’m not concerned about the past at all,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said Saturday morning before the team flew back to Sunrise. “Our plan is set. I know it’s 3-3. But the concern of the previous three games certainly didn’t affect Edmonton, and it won’t affect us.”

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After losing in last year’s Cup Final, blowing a 3-0 series lead is unthinkable. It will etch their name alongside the Buffalo Bills in the annals of championship disappointment. Or they can erase all of these bad vibes in one game and lift a Stanley Cup.

If that isn’t enough to bring out their best, nothing is.

“The emotions change, the mood changes,” Maurice said of a Game 7. “Both teams get to come to the rink with a certain amount of freedom, right? There’s nothing left to be concerned about. It’s all energy.

“It’s everything you’ve got in a short period of time. So the context changes. Both teams will try to get to their identity as best they can.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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