Legend of Leon grows as Oilers reign supreme in Battle of Alberta
CALGARY, Alberta — Oh the stories they will tell, when their hair is grey and their bellies are bigger and they gather in 25 years with beers in-hand at a team reunion.
The Edmonton Oilers will tell their kids and grandkids about the Magic of Connor McDavid, the Legend of Leon Draisaitl and the 2022 Battle of Alberta that left everyone breathless.
They’ll remember McDavid morphing into a superhero, Draisaitl doing it on one leg, and how for five glorious nights, the Oilers and Calgary Flames turned back the clock to the fire-wagon hockey of the 1980s with 45 goals scored. Two Stanley Cup playoff records were set for quickest goals – two to start a game (51 seconds) and fastest four goals in one game (71 seconds).
As the series seesawed between cities, there were no days of the week, only game days and non-game days. An entire province alternated between detoxing and re-toxing on contests as drunk as the rabid fanbases.
Players may come and go, new arenas will be erected, but the Battle of Alberta never, ever disappoints – even after a 31-year layoff.
The only regret was that it ended after five games. McDavid simply wouldn’t let it linger on any longer.
Five minutes into overtime, McDavid streaked through a seam, cradled a pass from Draisaitl – who else? – and deposited the puck behind Jacob Markstrom.
The best player in the world rambunctiously pumped his fists with passion overflowing and skated toward a center ice celebration, a rare emotional outburst from McDavid. The frustration and failures of playoffs past melted away like the Saddledome ice soon will.
“It was great,” McDavid said. “Hard to put into words what that one meant to me.”
La Bamba roared in the locker room after the Oilers ousted the Flames, 5-4 in overtime, to advance to their first Western Conference final since 2006. They will open on the road next week against the winner of the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues series.
Edmonton now owns a 5-1 mark all-time in Battle of Alberta playoff series.
“Hell of a hockey game,” Flames coach Darryl Sutter said. “The best player won the series.”
Sutter, of course, was referring to McDavid. And everyone will remember McDavid’s overtime winner, yet another moment when he put the Oilers on his back with a steely-eyed, refuse-to-lose determination that fueled the whole city.
But on Thursday night, McDavid was still dangerous, but he wasn’t actually Edmonton’s best player. He acknowledged as much.
“I was trying to get my legs going, they weren’t moving all that well on the ice,” McDavid said. “I was just happy to contribute on a night where maybe I wasn’t my best.”
Even Batman sometimes cedes the spotlight to Robin. Draisaitl grabbed the torch, picked up McDavid, and snuffed out the Flames with a monster four-point night.
With all due respect to Nathan MacKinnon, Draisaitl is the best No. 29 so far in these playoffs. He ended Round 2 tied with McDavid atop the scoring list with 26 points. Three of his four assists on Thursday were primary points, factoring in on four of Edmonton’s five goals.
Total it up and Drasaitl turned in arguably the best series in Stanley Cup playoff history. He finished with 17 points over the five games, the best points-per-game clip by one player ever in a single series, and set two individual Stanley Cup records along the way with five consecutive games of at least three points and four assists in one period.
Draisaitl also passed Wayne Gretzky (14) for most points in one Battle of Alberta. He was power personified.
“With what Connor has done, Leon’s performance has gone under the radar a little bit,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “He has the ability to hold people off and make plays in tight spaces. I think he’s the best passer in the world. The amount of plays he makes for our team is unbelievable. To do that with what he’s going through, he’s an absolute warrior.”
It’s hard to figure whether the MVP of the series was Draisaitl, McDavid or the Oilers’ training staff, which nursed Draisaitl and top defenseman Darnell Nurse back to better health.
Draisaitl’s high-ankle sprain sustained in Game 6 against Los Angeles likely would have kept him out four-to-six weeks in the regular season. Somehow, he only got stronger and more powerful as Round 2 went on – which is either a credit to modern medicine or his German engineering.
“I’m not going to stand here and talk about myself,” Draisaitl said. “I thought our whole team did a great job to adjust and get back to what makes us successful as a team. I’m really, really proud of the guys.”
No matter the score, no matter the circumstance, the Flames were never able to fully wrestle control away from the Oilers. Consider this: Calgary, one of the best defensive teams in the league in the regular season, blew two-goal leads in all three home games.
“Missed opportunities,” Sutter lamented. “Won a round, kind of ran out of ammo in this series. Did not finish great opportunities, goes the other way.”
The supposedly deeper, more experienced Flames are now left with significant questions to answer this offseason. Contracts are up for both 100-point scorers Johnny Gaudreau (UFA) and Matthew Tkachuk (RFA) and neither player exactly bathed himself in glory against the Oilers.
The best roster GM Brad Treliving has built won their first series since 2015, but skated through the handshake line in a state of shock with how quickly it was all over. Calgary led just 110:19 of the 305:03 played in the series.
“You want to criticize? I’ll leave that for you [media] to criticize,” Sutter said of his team, which went from outside the playoff picture to Pacific Division champions in one year. “They did a hell of a lot more than anyone gave them credit for.”
In this series, Edmonton had an answer for everything the Flames threw at them. They never seemed rattled in the face of fluke goals against and controversial calls, and in fact, almost looked giddy trailing by two goals in Game 5.
“With our group, there is a measure of calm, a measure of composure, and a strong belief that we have the right people in the room that can get us through any type of circumstance,” Woodcroft said. “I walked into that room in the beginning of February and I was bullish on our players. I saw a sincere desire to win. Not just win, but they were willing to pay the price to win.”
These aren’t the Oilers of yesteryear, who wilted when the lights were brightest. Draisaitl and McDavid both mentioned the disappointments and heartbreak of past playoffs properly prepared them for the magnitude of the moment.
“We all want to win,” McDavid said. “Everybody wants to win. I think our group has been through a lot this year and years past and it’s just made us hungrier and hungrier to be successful. We’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. It’s gotten us to this point and we obviously want to keep going here.”
As he went through the handshake line, Sutter paused for a moment to speak to McDavid. The Viking, Alta., rancher spent a lot of time between jobs watching and marveling at No. 97 from afar, then had the best seat in the house for the last five nights.
Sutter said he told McDavid: “They’re in a position now to do something special.” The Oilers are halfway home.