Edmonton Oilers balance rest vs. maintaining momentum ahead of Round 3

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They’ve won eight of nine games and are playing as good, if not better than they have all year.

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So, what better time for a break than right now for the Edmonton Oilers in their season-long quest at a do-over in the Stanley Cup Final?

After wrapping up their Western Conference semifinal with a 4-1 series win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday, there was a chance the Oilers would have found themselves turning right around and flying out Friday to open the conference final on the road Saturday.

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But with other Round 2 series going the distance, the Oilers took Thursday and Friday before holding a practice Saturday at Rogers Place instead.

“I think it’s important that the guys have some time off,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We gave them two days off and we’ve got a long stretch. There was a chance we were almost playing already.

“Obviously, we’re not playing until later in the week and we don’t want to make it too monotonous for our players, so we’re going to spread out our practices, give our guys plenty of time off and just make sure when they are on the ice, they’re purposeful and we’re playing with some intensity.”

But be careful what you wish for. There is such a thing as having too much of a good thing.

And the Oilers don’t have the best track record recently when it comes to time off.

Just look at the off-season after falling in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. While they had all the motivation in the world to kick down the door on the 2024-25 season, they ended up opening with three straight losses and dropping five of their first seven.

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Or how about the nosedive they took after the break for 4 Nations Face-Off, following up a 31-8-2 stretch coming in, by dropping four straight coming out?

A season ago, the core of this roster went on a 16-game winning streak prior to the all-star break, only to lose to the Vegas Golden Knights coming out of it, and fall one game shy of tying an NHL record.

While time off might be good for the body, the Oilers have shown their minds aren’t necessarily the best at getting back to work.

“This is not really that big of a break,” said forward Zach Hyman. “Those are a week where you aren’t at the rink, we’re at the rink every day.

“So, we’re ready to go, we’re excited. Don’t know who we’re playing obviously, so it’s just a good time to rest up. We had a good practice today, and just get ready.”

But there is something to be said for earning a bit of a break during playoffs.

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“Listen, the quicker you can finish a series up, the better shape you’ll be in,” Hyman said. “Playoffs are a grind, the regular season’s a grind, so any time you can get a couple days it’s beneficial.”

While Calvin Pickard and Mattias Ekholm are still on the mend and aren’t expected to be available, at least, to open Round 3, there was one absence from the group of regulars Saturday, which saw Viktor Arvidsson take over Connor Brown’s spot on the third line.

“Just a maintenance day,” Knoblauch said. “We expect he’ll be on the ice for our next practice.”

And while it’s nice to rest up those bumps and bruises, there is also something to be said about continuing on with the momentum the team has accumulated over the past round and a half.

“I mean, it’s nice to get some energy back, for sure. The series are hard, long and definitely zap your energy, but sometimes it is kind of nice to get back into it,” said forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “I think today would have been quick, for sure, for both sides, but sometimes it’s nice to just kind of (ease into a series).

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“There’s always little things to get healthy, and sometimes that’s nice.”

As long as it contributes to the same sort of success the team has been on up to this point, of course — not that the Oilers don’t fully realize what it takes to complete the task ahead of them.

“Just playing a hard game and understanding that it’s probably just experience over the past few years of how important every moment in every game is,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “And when you have that mindset, you find that you start to win a lot more than you lose.

“And that’s been our mindset even going into the start of the L.A. series. Obviously, the first two don’t go your way and you’ve got to find a way to battle back. Every moment matters and we take so much pride in the little things that it goes a long way getting those wins.”

E-mail: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge

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