It’s our very first ever playoff edition of the Mailbag! As always, I’ve taken your questions and sent them to our writers to get the answers that you need in your life. I’ve said it many times before, but this segment is entirely dependent on you guys and I need questions for next week. If you have something you’d like to ask you can email me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk.com.

Started nervous, righted the ship and played 10+ solid minutes in the first. Parade to the penalty box ruined flow, left them tentative. Aggressive Sharks won the day. I’d say six minutes of nervous, 10 minutes of good, 44 minutes of ‘what the hell happened there?’

I didn’t think so. They were too revved up, took too many penalties and their passing wasn’t sharp. They were their own worst enemy, and I didn’t see the Sharks doing “veteran” things to hurt them. Some of the Sharks most effective players were young guys.

The speed of the playoffs is a big change. Everything happens so fast and every play is critical. There is an adjustment period. They came out with it lot more intensity in Game 2 and seemed ready to rumble.

Lesson? No. Nerves and being unsure of yourself boil down to inexperience and the inability to seize the moment rather than letting it seize you. Looked like a different team in Game 2.

That was certainly the dominant narrative in the press coming out of Game 1. It’s a plausible story; it might even be true. But this wouldn’t be the first time a team – be it veteran or young, regular season or playoffs – sat back too much with an early lead and then found themselves unable to claw their way back into the game.

I wouldn’t call it a lesson in a sense that they weren’t expecting what was to come, I think they were nervous and uneasy, but that’s the process with playoff hockey. Their second game showed that they do know how to perform… they just needed to get the first game of nerves out of the way.

The Oilers took six penalties on Wednesday night and that left them shorthanded for over half a period. It’s pretty tough to win when you’re in the penalty box that often. Not a great recipe for success.

The team got off to a hot start, grabbing a 2-0 lead and then reverted into a shell trying to defend it. Rather than continuing to force the issue, they stayed back and let the experienced Sharks work their way back into the game. It could be a nerves thing, or it could have been the Sharks just being a good team and capitalizing on what the Oilers gave them.

I think it was an interesting idea, but am certain season ticket holders and fans who purchased game tickets were displeased. One suspects this runs its course in short order.

As a season ticket holder, I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t like it and think it is a slap in face to those who pay huge prices for seats to now endure even longer lines for food, beer and washrooms.

No issue with it at all. If people want to buy them why not sell them?

If there isn’t a demand for these kinds of tickets they won’t sell.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. The Oilers have a shiny new publicly subsidized building already designed to rake in the cash, and should worry a little bit more about giving the optimal experience to their long-suffering season ticket holders rather than scraping for every available dollar.

Definitely unnecessary and a cash-grab. I wasn’t in the arena myself but from what I heard it was overcrowded and a pain in the ass.

As someone that got caught in the bathroom lines at Rogers Place I can say from experience that the extra people added to the problem. I was even talking to some ushers and they said they had absolutely no direction about what the concourse passes entitled people to do. The guy at the top of my section said he had to kick people off the stairs a bunch of times and that it was a huge hassle.

It’s unfortunate there wasn’t more effort put into some kind of big, outdoor viewing area for fans to gather for free. Something like what the Leafs and Raptors do outside the Air Canada Centre in Toronto would be great for downtown Edmonton.

Drink water through the day, and match one water/wobbly pop through the evening. Also, have a good bit to eat somewhere between 4pm-7pm and maybe a cracker around midnight. Greasy spoon restaurant nearby the following morning also recommended.

Hydrate. Drinking water regularly during game days and nights is easiest fix. And be sure to get a good night sleep the day before a game. And if you can slide in a nap before the brutal 8:30 starts I’d try that also. I’d go for more vodka/waters and avoid pop as a mix. The sugar will crush you the next day.

Go to bed early on non-Oilers playoff game nights. Find a friend with a steam shower for the morning afters. Don’t be afraid to mix in a water. Stick to China whites.

A rough morning because . . ? Would have to know the reasons why to provide any tips.

I’d just try to enjoy it while it lasts, ride the rollercoaster and drink plenty of coffee the next morning. No matter how good your team, a long playoff run is a rare occurrence, and you’re going to remember the experience for a long time afterwards.

Vanilla Latte’s from Starbucks, and non-stop ogling at Connor McDavid.

You and me both! Here’s what I do. I make a survival pack that includes a Gatorade (BLUE!), some beef jerky, coke bottle candies, and two Tylenol cold and flu tablets. Works like magic.

Water.

Uneven, but the Oilers made it easy with some truly poor decisions.

I have had little issue with it. Refs aren’t perfect. My issue is more with the NHL’s head honchos unwillingness to instruct the refs to call all the obstruction. Make no mistake the league decides how much they want called. In 2006 coming out of the lockout they did not want refs to let up on obstruction calls and they didn’t. But in the last decade, we are now back to allowing too much obstruction/slashing etc. Don’t blame the refs, blame the league for allowing it.

I can’t stand when people blame the refs. Every fan base, coaching staff, group of players, media, training staff and mascot blame the refs. It is the same everywhere. LET IT GO! Your team isn’t getting screwed more than the other squad. The league does not have an agenda. If it hasn’t balanced out this year it will next year of the year after.  Video review is making it worse. Everyone thinks the game should be called perfectly. Take away video review.

It is weak. Referees have not been consistent because they seldom are consistent, and that’s a problem. I find that complaints about officials are most often made by fans of teams that lost — even if it’s framed as a general discussion about the officiating. Not a coincidence.

I think that’s a discussion we can (and do) have every year, because every year the officiating is imperfect. And if you ever feel really bad about it, wait a game or two and follow some fans of the opposing team. There were some angry, angry Sharks fans after Game 2; more, I think, than Oilers fans after Game 1. Generally these things even out.

Yeah I’m not blaming anything on the referees, but it’s extremely frustrating watching the calls being made in our current series vs the Habs/Rangers for example. In the Habs series, the refs are letting shots after the whistle go which is great! It’s playoffs, let them play. I think the officials have been calling too tight of a game for it being playoffs in our series and it’s annoying.

I think I wrote about 75 wrap ups this year (give or take a couple) and I probably complained about the refs in almost all of them.

It wasn’t perfect, but search refs on twitter and you’ll see that every single fanbase thinks the zebras have an agenda against them. The Oilers play a pretty physical game, some will let it be, some won’t. Nature of the beast.

Mark Messier versus Chicago May 8, 1990.

Gretzky in 1985. He was unreal. He had 17 goals and 47 points in 18 games. He averaged 2.6 points per game. In the freaking playoffs.

Lebron James two years ago. He got his group to the final against the Warriors. A team that was full of injured players. He dragged his team as far as he could and then ran out of gas against a very very good Warriors team. Even though they lost he was amazing!

The Oilers coming back from a 3-1 deficit in games against Colorado to win the series in seven games in 1998 ranks up there for me.

That’s tough, because how do you narrow it down to just one? I’ve seen some crazy goaltending performances – from Patrick Roy to Dominik Hasek to Jean-Sebastien Giguere to Jonathan Quick. The 2009 Penguins run was something else, for both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Chris Pronger in 2006 was incredible. The two that really came to mind were the unlikeliest ones, though: Fernando Pisani in 2006 and Michael Leighton in 2010. Both players came out of nowhere to play critical roles in their team’s surprise runs.

Zack Kassian, April 14th, 2017. Jokes aside, he played amazing. I really enjoyed watching Dwayne Roloson shut the door in the conference finals in 2006.

Pisani’s OT winner in Game 5 of the 2006 Cup run will always stick out to me. I was at a bar and my cousin threw a full pitcher of the beer in the air and no one even cared that they got covered in it.

That said, my favourite playoff goal of all-time is Steve Yzerman’s OT winner against St. Louis. Pretty sure Jon Casey still hasn’t seen it go in.

Easily Jean-Sebastien Giguere in 2003. That was madness.

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