Last Saturday, after the Game 3 loss against the Ducks, Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch was asked a question about his team’s inconsistent performance. 

Despite the players saying the right things and despite the Ducks being a beatable opponent, this interaction told me this team wasn’t likely to come back.

Mark Spector: “It seems like you’ve been searching for your game. It’s been a season of searching. Couldn’t find it early, found it around Christmas, lost it again, found it after the Olympic break, playoffs start you’re looking for it again. Why do you think that is? 

Kris Knoblauch: “I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that. If any of them are correct…um, I dunno. Just…having the…nah, I don’t think I have an answer for ya today.”

This wasn’t a new question from Oilers reporters, of course, but Knoblauch’s mind was trying to find a way to couch the information, like he usually does. In the end, he said it all without saying it. That would come later. 

Well, after a tired, injured, and overall lifeless hockey team couldn’t make the right adjustments, kill penalties, or play a brand of playoff hockey, losing in six games to a younger, faster, green hockey team on Thursday night – everyone said it. 

To borrow Knoblauch or Connor McDavid’s words in the funereal post-game interviews, the regular season was “monotonous” or a “formality” for a team that was “average” all year long. 

Hey, I don’t blame them, either. My expectations for this team’s ceiling in 2025-26 were always low. 

Florida made everyone believe that going to three straight Stanley Cup Finals ain’t a big deal. Don’t forget, Florida and Tampa Bay are outliers in the league since the NHL expanded beyond 21 teams. As I pointed out in November, winning a Stanley Cup after losing two in a row hasn’t been done since the 1950s, a time when the league was just six teams, not 32. 

The volume of tough hockey this team played, the mental and physical toll, was too much to bear. Add in the electric shock of an Olympic competition, the truncated schedule, and then another soul-crushing loss for McDavid, the result of this season isn’t........

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