Anglesmith
Setting up the play?
Hey guys oilers fan. I'm genuinely not trolling and have an honest question about something we discuss in edmonton.
How big of a turning even was it when rittich did the stick toss after the shootout win vs Edmonton?
Apparently after the game in the locker room Tippett said that if there is any team you should always be fired up to play its the guy who mocked us on national TV.
You'll recall the next game cumulated with rittich being chased from the net and having to return after the Talbot Smith fight.
Gaten haas scored on a penalty shot and rittich looked like a broken man.
The Flames team that won that shoot and had the better of Edmonton earlier I never saw again.
How big of an impact was it? Looks like a watershed moment.
I can understand the optics from what the Oilers saw, but the Flames had gone off the rails previously in that season. They had a massive losing streak and the Peters controversy which led to his firing occurred near the end of it.
The series of games against the Oilers occurred during the "new coach bump." They hadn't been playing at that level all season, and it was never going to last. After that was over, they reverted back to a level closer to where they were before.
In other words, I think it's hard to support the notion that anything would have been different for the team had the stick remained untossed.
In addition, the first embarrassing incident for the Oilers was the Tkachuk/Kassian game. Hard to build a case that one helped fuel the Flames while the other broke them for some reason.