Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch was thrashed in Game 7 for a mistake made by many previous Oilers coaches.

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Hockey is a game of mistakes and the Edmonton Oilers made their fair share of them in the 2024 playoffs, with over 500 individual errors resulting in 270 Grade A shots and/or goals.

Right now there is a lot of complaining and attention on goalie Stuart Skinner missing the shot on Florida’s game-winning goal and Brett Kulak failing to get close to Sam Reinhart to take away the shot on the same play. I know I will remember that work as long as I live. I’ll always associate it with how the Oilers lost, probably forgetting the Oilers’ 500-plus similar mistakes on Grade A shots during the playoffs, some of those mistakes just as bad or worse than Skinner and Kulak’s mistakes on the game’s goal. victory.

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I will also remember two mistakes made by coach Kris Knoblauch. Despite the many excellent decisions and plays Knoblauch made in the playoffs, often going against the advice of fans like me, these two decisions in the Stanley Cup Final series had a huge impact on my impression of the coach. Again, it’s not fair that this is the case, especially considering the number of great plays the coach made and the total number of mistakes made by his own team, the opposing team, and opposing coaches. But that’s hockey.

It is the loss that hurts and, rightly or wrongly, it is the mistakes closest to the loss that remain etched in our brains. That’s why we’ll all remember Skinner and Kulak’s gaffes, and it’s why many of us are still a little miffed by two of Knoblauch’s dubious moves, first his use of the Cody Ceci-Darnell Nurse pairing in the Game 1, and then his over. -playing poorly in Game 7 when he had Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the ice too much in the third period, draining all their energy so that in the final push of the final minutes, they had nothing to give.

I have to say that I loved most of Knoblauch’s moves this year. I loved his zone defense and his aggressive front attack. I admired his stoic attitude, his quiet strength, and the essential decency that marked all of his public statements about his team and his players.

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But these two moves, the Ceci-Nurse tactic and the McDavid-Draisaitl hype? Not so much.

I’m not going to go into the details of the Ceci-Nurse bug, as I and others wrote and talked a lot about it at the time. It did not make sense. The two d-men had failed miserably together during the playoffs and had fared better apart. It was a mystery why they met for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, and the result was as predictable as it was decisive, major errors by one or the other in the partnership on both of Florida’s goals that game. .

Knoblauch quickly pulled away from the pair in the next game, but one game too late, with the opportunity blown in Game 1, when the Oilers had played exceptional hockey, chasing Edmonton in the series.

The main job of any coach, the NHL’s most successful coach, Scotty Bowman, once said, is to put the right players on the ice, and Nurse-Ceci was the wrong pairing at the wrong time.

Hammering the trump card in the seventh game

Then came Game 7, with Florida taking a 2-1 lead thanks to Skinner-Kulak’s error. The goal came with about five minutes left in the second period and that’s when Knoblauch probably made a good decision, to repeatedly finish off his trump card, that trump card being the line of Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman.

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Generally, putting McDavid and Draisaitl together on the same line has worked well, which is why every Oilers coach has turned to this line combination so often, from Todd McLellan to Ken Hitchcock, from Dave Tippett to Jay Woodcroft and now Knoblauch.

On average, in the 2015-24 McDavid-Draisaitl Era, McDavid and Draisaitl played together 5-on-5, 351 minutes per season, scoring 24 goals and allowing 17.6, for a solid 57.1 goals percentage.

Compare that to the seasonal average of 1,429 5-on-5 minutes when neither McDavid nor Draisaitl have been on the ice and the team has averaged 41.5 goals for, 53.8 goals against and a 43.6 goals against percentage.

Of course, then, the Oilers coaches have been interested in using the two stars together, but the problem has arisen when the coaches resort to this strategy too much and for too long, often knocking down McDavid and Draisiatl in the games, and It also allows opposing teams to start stacking the deck against them, making sure their best defensemen are on the ice, knowing that if they can shut down Edmonton when McDrai is on the ice, otherwise they won’t have much to go on. worry.

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This is exactly what happened in the third period of Game 7 against Florida.

Knoblauch leaned heavily on Drasaitl, McDavid and Hyman. They were on the ice for almost half the period, Draisaitl 8:59, Hyman 9:20 and McDavid 9:56.

And in a thrilling flash with about seven minutes left, they nearly tied the game, working together to help set up two big outside shots from Evan Bouchard, with Hyman nearly scoring on a 5-alarm play in tight spaces, in which The goal was only stopped by Florida defenders who jumped in to block the shots.

That was the last big push from Edmonton’s big line. They helped set up Mattias Ekholm for a Grade A shot with just over two minutes left, but they evidently ran out of breath after that. Ekholm’s shot was the last good one for Edmonton. They didn’t come close to scoring a goal in the last two minutes. They were outnumbered on the offensive corners and in battle for pucks. It was a sad moment.

McDavid and Draisaitl together had outscored the opposition nine goals to four at 5-on-5 in the 2024 playoffs, a huge lead, but they didn’t have the energy to extend that lead by one more goal when it was needed most.

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Adding to the frustration of seeing them get outplayed because they were overplayed and exhausted was the fact that Edmonton had essentially been down to two lines in the final ten minutes, which meant the excellent and opportunistic third line of Edmonton’s Adam Henrique. Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown barely saw the ice.

It did not make sense

This line had scored Edmonton’s only goal of the game, a lightning goal by Janmark on a breakaway in the first period. They had been able to get a few more shots on goal. Given their diligence, tenacity and will to win, they seemed to have the same chance of scoring as any other Oilers line in the third period.

But in the last period Henrique played only 3:14 with the same strength, Brown only 2:01 and the dangerous and aggressive Janmark only 2:30.

Talk about NOT going with a hot hand.

I’ll suggest it was a mistake by the Oilers coaches, a critical one.

But that’s hockey. It’s a game of mistakes. It’s a game where one moment can cost you the Stanley Cup. And it’s a game where we fans never forget that moment, even if it was just a fraction of the time in the big picture.

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The fact that Skinner, Kulak, and Knoblauch made such errors should not matter so much when evaluating them. It only has consequences if a player or coach repeatedly makes such mistakes. None of the three are in that category. In fact, all three were outstanding in the playoffs after all. I’ll try to keep that in mind too.

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