Statement Game
8 years ago
The phrase “statement game” gets tossed around liberally, and should be regarded with suspicion. For any team, a professional NHL season is a complicated thing, 82 games plus playoffs of ups and downs and injuries and bounces and myriad other factors that outsiders sometimes see and sometimes never hear of. Boiling all that down to a handful of character-defining moments always means losing detail and nuance, and often means lazily generalizing by a few easy-to-remember (and generally recent) events.
Because of all that, it’s worth taking this next part with a grain of salt. But Game 81 against the Vancouver Canucks certainly felt like a statement game to me.
Game 80 vs. Calgary
I’m writing this in large part because of the reaction to Game 80.
That contest was a 5-0 loss to the Calgary Flames, one I had the pleasure of summarizing here at Oilers Nation. I wanted to include a “it’s one game, don’t overreact” line somewhere in the piece, but the problem was that as I wrote the wrap-up I just kept thinking of the fans shoveling out hundreds of dollars to watch a rested Edmonton team get smoked at home by an almost equally lousy Flames roster.
In the grand scheme of things, “don’t overreact to a single game” is good advice. It would have been a silly thing to say to a thoroughly frustrated fanbase deservedly venting after a nearly inexcusable loss.
It wasn’t just frustrated fans venting, though. Much of the professional commentary in the days afterward carried an underlying message that this was one of those statement games. After nearly a full year of playing under a new coach, of making gains, the team had flushed it all away in that loss. Todd McLellan was visibly frustrated; it was easy to take this game, view it through the lens of the team’s recent failures and proclaim that there was a grander lesson here: A team with a flawed character, a team in need of flushing out players who were either unwilling or unable to compete, players broken by years of losing.
In fairness, the Calgary game didn’t create these beliefs so much as it confirmed them for many. And the belief that losing is a contagion is not confined to punditry; then-general manager Craig MacTavish made similar comments when he moved Ales Hemsky and Shawn Horcoff, while Colorado Avalance head coach Patrick Roy said something in the same vein just the other day to a Denver radio station.
The fortunate thing for the Oilers was that they had a chance to respond.
Game 81 vs. Vancouver
It’s worth remembering that even the best teams can suffer embarrassing losses.
The Los Angeles Kings last season are a good example; they missed the playoffs after going 0-for-3 on a Western Canada road trip, with the deciding game being a 4-2 loss at the hands of Todd Nelson’s Oilers. The key offensive players for Edmonton were Matt Fraser (two goals), Tyler Pitlick (game-winning goal) and Anton Lander (two helpers). One of the most successful teams in the last five years, a club with two Cup wins in the three preceding seasons, saw its playoff hopes die in a game against a team that was basically the Oklahoma City Barons.
Not only were the Oilers coming off a nasty loss in which they had been ripped by coach and media alike, but there was added pressure: This was the final game at Rexall Place, and a lavish post-game ceremony was planned; one can imagine how the crowd might have reacted to a poor effort.
They won 6-2. It wasn’t always pretty, but after a tentative first period Edmonton took over. The Oilers got scoring from three different forward lines, with Connor McDavid and Taylor Hall leading the way with one goal and two assists each. They didn’t slump, letting the Canucks back into the game; rather they poured on the offence.
After taking it on the chin against the Flames, after days of at times vicious public criticism and then in the (national) spotlight of Rexall Place’s final game, the team delivered, with long-serving forwards Hall (three points) and Eberle (two points, seven shots) taking leading roles.
It’s not the kind of thing one would really expect from losers, from a core lacking character, a core so used to losing that under the slightest bit of adversity the wheels come off.
And now we’re back to the problem with statement games. Consider two competing theories of the Oilers’ struggles in the Hall/Eberle rebuild:
- Edmonton keeps losing because its young core has too many losers, players who lack either the ability or willingness to do what it takes to win. For those who believe in this explanation, Game 80 stands out as a great example of the problem.
- Edmonton keeps losing because the core has never been adequately supported; the next time it plays with a quality defence will be the first time, to say nothing of the revolving door behind the bench, the semi-annual implosion in net and the often sub-par bottom-six. For those skeptical of the character explanation, Game 81 offers a chance to push this theory instead.
I lean toward the latter theory. The first is too pat, too convenient for my taste; branding players winners and losers means being able to judge by labels and skip over the hard work of actually digging in and studying a team. It relies on feelings rather than facts. It doesn’t matter what a player’s scoring numbers are or how a team’s goal and shot differential changes when he steps on the ice if in my heart I’ve deemed him to be a winner or loser. Intangibles matter, of course, but too often they’re in the eye of the beholder and lack a substantial foundation.
And sometimes, as in the case of the Oilers most recent game, there’s evidence that the character and mental fortitude of a team is better than its often claimed to be.
But that’s the problem with boiling down a season to a game. I have an existing belief that there are obvious, tangible problems with Edmonton that need to be addressed, problems which supersede the intangible problems which take up so much space in the conversation surrounding the team. Because of that existing belief, it’s easy to look at only those plays and games that confirm my opinion, while rejecting those that contradict it.
I tend to think that Edmonton’s Game 81 game demonstrated growth, that it showed a club able to come back and win despite adversity, despite pressure, despite public criticism. But it’s one game, and needs to be considered as part of a bigger whole rather than in isolation.
RECENTLY BY JONATHAN WILLIS
Recent articles from Jonathan Willis
