I’ll have to disagree there. I can see how the W would be important for confidence, but the rest is much more important.
The Oilers weren’t on an eight game losing streak going down the stretch like the Jets were. Hockey is a contact sport you can’t play to avoid injuries.
Exactly. So instead of playing to avoid injuries, you just don’t play them at all.
So why did the Oilers play McDavid in their final game? By Jets fan's standards that should be considered the biggest coaching mistake of the season by any coach across the league.
I disagree with the decision to play him and Draisaitl, for sure. They're lucky they didn't get injuries. We weren't so lucky.
So McDavid can have his points. And yes it was stupid.
This gnashing of teeth on the need to rest players to avoid injury seems a little over the top to me. Ehlers was injured almost a month ago so I'm assuming no one is suggesting we should have held out Ehlers for the final month of the season. The one player we lost in the last game of the season was PLD, and he was pretty much the last player you'd want to hold out since he has already missed over a quarter of the season and hasn't really found his game that we need him to play yet.
I’d be making this comment even without PLD’s injury.
I look at it the opposite way. If you are one of the favourites maybe you take the foot of the pedal and coast into the playoffs resting players knowing you can ramp it up. If you are a dark horse long shot you want to go in on a roll with momentum hoping you can catch a favourite off guard. The odds are against you, but you have no chance going in cold like we were. Whoever wins the cup will have 2 + months of heavy slogging and every team will have their injuries. None of this matters if you don't get out of the gate because your starting flatfooted.
Give credit where credit is due. He had a hell of a game plan and the players executed it well.
Perhaps, but I think it's more likely that the players were just more "dialed in", as most teams are in the playoffs. It does occur to me that we sometimes overemphasize coaching, and not so much roster and player performance levels.
If that's the case, they were terribly "dialed out" for most of the year.
I suspect that Lowry had input into last night's game planning - similar to the way he transformed our PK this season. We were playing much more of a zone D than I've seen... well, ever.
I think they were dialed in and out during the season. Their last 3 games vs. the Oilers were at an odd time - they had basically pushed through 17 road games, put themselves in a secure playoff position (2 or 3), and then seemed to let down vs. the Oilers. It's not an "excuse", but there is some context here. Regardless of how players say that they are "dialed in" all the time, it's clear that they find different levels of play / consistency throughout the regular season, and go to a different level in the playoffs.
I didn't like Forbort at all. Slow with and without the puck, but at least he didn't get caught flat-footed in transition. Poolman struggled with his defense on the puck in his zone. DeMelo was uncharacteristically sloppy with his first touch - he can be better.
Oilers hard gapped at the offensive blue line a few times last night and got burned. Can’t imagine Tippet was too happy and that it was part of the plan based on his comments. I think the Oilers tend to get impatient 5v5 in tight checking games, the Jets really need to just stay committed to making things difficult for them, and staying out of the box of course.
