The Edmonton Oilers handled their business to stave off elimination on Tuesday, but with Game 6 happening on the road, it was going to take an even better effort if they were going to do it again. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a better effort. Not even close. Instead, the Anaheim Ducks basically controlled the game from post to post en route to a series-clinching 5-2 win. For as excited as we were to drag ’em back to Berta, the only thing coming back is a plane full of sad, beat-up boys and another lost season.

As cool as it was to watch the Oilers score three goals in the first period of Game 5, it was equally uncool to watch them give up three in the first period of Game 6. The Ducks got two friendly bounces that wound up in the net and a snipe by Chris Kreider in a stretch of just under eight minutes, and all of a sudden, the Oilers were on the ropes in the most important game of the season. Even with Connor Murphy’s goal that temporarily stopped the bleeding, you don’t have to be overly smart to figure out this was the exact opposite of where Edmonton wanted to be after 20 minutes. The Ducks were opportunistic, the Oilers were busy reacting instead of creating.

Moving into the second period, the Oilers were once again a step behind and struggled to match Anaheim’s pace. For a team fighting for their lives, our boys didn’t play with much urgency, as most offensive chances were one-and-dones off the rush. And for the second straight period, Edmonton was heavily outshot by an Anaheim team that was 2000% ready to play and doing everything they could nail the coffin shut. It wasn’t like the Oilers were going down guns blazing, but rather they looked like a shell of the teams that were so resilient in past runs. They looked tired. And with another Cup-less year seemingly on the horizon, the response we all hoped to see was nowhere to be found. Instead, we saw a young, hungry team winning every battle and playing with every shade of intensity.

As much as it’s going to blow to dissect what went wrong for the next six months — Gord knows there’s plenty to talk about — it’s hard not to admire how hard Anaheim played in this series. As much as we all thought the Oilers were going to win, the Ducks played like they really didn’t give a shit what anyone thought should happen. They played basically every game like their lives depended on it, and they found ways to score goals at moments when they needed the offence. Even though the Oilers were fine at even strength, they simply could not stop anything the Ducks had cooking on the power play, and it ended up being the difference. But even at even strength, they played with so much more jump than the Oilers that our side could never seem to gain any traction.

As much as we’re going to hear people talk about the injuries, fatigue, and any other list of viable excuses to explain what happened, the Anaheim Ducks deserved to win this series. Unlike our beloved Oilers, I highly doubt there were any moments at all when Ducks fans were just hoping their team would show up to play. They never needed an invitation or to have their backs against the wall to play with some jam, and that relentlessness proved too much for the Oilers to handle. Despite being the inexperienced team, Anaheim forced the games to be played in a style that suited them. Instead of adjusting, the Oilers walked right into their trap and paid the price for it too. The series may have ended 4-2 for Anaheim, and you could make an argument that it could have gone the other way if the Oilers had just shown up the way they kept promising they would. Nice to dream about, I guess.

For the first time since the weird COVID all-Canadian season, the Oilers got bumped out in the first round of the playoffs after a less-than-impressive six-game run. After back-to-back appearances in the Stanley Cup, the Oilers are kicked out of the dance before they could even make any noise, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Edmonton held a lead in the first five games of this series but only won two of them. In another universe, we’d be talking about the Oilers getting through to the second round a handful of days ago, but because we don’t live in Imaginationland, the mistakes they made and didn’t fix have us all booking tee times. That’s a frustrating spot to be in after the last two runs were filled with so much hope.

At the very least, we should be in for a very interesting summer. With expectations around here much higher than a first round exit, I won’t be the least bit surprised if the Oilers make some significant changes over the summer. With the McDavid extension kicking in and the pressure to make good on it at an all-time high, there’s going to be immense pressure on Stan Bowman to pull the right levers to get this group over the hump. That is, if he is still the one who gets to do that. It’s not like ol’ Stan had a sparkling season of transactions. Could this be what gets Kris Knoblauch fired, even though he just signed an extension last summer? Could there be other moves we can’t even think about right now? While only time will tell, the result of last night’s hockey game means we have a whole lot more time to think about it.

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