EDMONTON — The term 'It’s a mental game' used to be somewhat cliché.
Not now. Not in a pandemic season.
Whether you’re the Calgary Flames, a team that can see a loss coming these days long before it arrives. Or the Edmonton Oilers, a road-weary club whose schedule is in flux, that trailed twice Friday night but found a way to win 3-2 in regulation.
The orange team believes. You can just see it in the way they handle themselves in a one-game homestand sandwiched between two trips out East — almost a scheduled loss over the years, when you’re a club on the Western prairies.
And the Flames? Their playoff dreams have expired, now 12 points behind Edmonton and Winnipeg with equal games played, and five back of the Montreal Canadiens, who have — count ‘em — five games in hand on Calgary.
The loss to Edmonton Friday was a final nail in the Calgary coffin.
“We’ve done a good job to separate ourselves from the pack a little bit, and we want to continue to do that,” said Oilers goalie Mike Smith. “Give teams that are out of the playoffs right now no hope, and looking in.”
The sign of a team that has promise is when it can win under varying circumstances. A team that’s never out of it no matter what the score, or how the schedule comes at them.
The Oilers, who had three games against Montreal postponed last week and a Hockey Night in Canada date with Vancouver postponed this weekend, are showing signs of being that team.
They ran their record to 5-2 against Calgary this season despite the fact the Flames led 1-0 and 2-1. They got two power-play goals engineered by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and once again Smith was better than Jacob Markstrom, who let McDavid’s third-period wrist shot bleed through for the game-winner.
“You need to be able to win in different circumstances,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said. “There are times when your top players can do it, your power play can do it, your penalty kill can do it… Your goalie can find a way to hang in a game for you.
“There are different ways, and our team, we talk about it. No matter what happens, we’ve got to find a way to win.”
The Smith-Markstrom relationship fascinates, considering how Oilers GM Ken Holland went hard after Markstrom as a free agent last off-season. When he lost out to the Flames on a six-year, $36-million deal, Holland went back to Smith one a one-year pact worth $1.5 million.
The results?
Head-to-head Smith has crushed Markstrom this season, and on the season the Oilers netminder’s stats are superior, posting a .919 saves percentage to Markstrom’s .901. On Friday, Smith simply refused to allow the next one, keeping his team alive until Markstrom surrendered the last one.
“It’s a mindset you have to have,” Smith said. “When the other team gets the lead you have to keep it within reach. When you’re just down a goal, your team is still far from done. That’s one thing that’s been exciting our team this year is, when you’re down one or two goals, you’re just one shot away from getting back in the game.
“When we’re down we can come back, and when we have the lead we can close games out.”
They did both against Calgary, a team that is officially playing out the string with 18 games left on its schedule.
Of course, that’s all relative, isn’t it? Calgary has two games scheduled with Vancouver this week, as does Edmonton the week after. The whole COVID thing had Tippett nervous about how his team would play Friday, as their two-game homestand was whittled down to just one.
“As a coach you’re concerned about coming home from a long trip, lots of stuff going on around (the team), with the game postponed (Saturday). You’re concerned about how your team is going to compete,” he said. “Coming off that trip, there wasn’t a lot of energy in our group. We won that game in Toronto, then we got on the plane and went back to Montreal. Everyone was looking at each other like, ‘Where are we going?’ It’s a game that was kinda thrown in there.”
The grind of staying inside and trying to avoid bringing the virus inside the locker room, coupled with a schedule that gets changed even when you do your part, leaves Tippett very aware of the mental toll this weird regular season is taking on his charges.
“We’re trying to monitor our group as best we can,” Tippett said. “Trying to make sure they get enough, not just physical rest but mental rest, because that’s going to be a factor coming down the stretch.
“We talked about it after the game tonight: Who knows what’s going to happen with our schedule now? You’ve just got to take whatever is in front of you, but you’ve got to be ready to accept that challenge also.”
It’s a challenge that one Alberta team is up to.
And the other one? Sorry — it’s next year country in the Stampede City.
