GENE'S BLOG: Playoff Prepared

It's that time of the year where every team, or at least 16 of them, feel like they have a chance to win the Stanley Cup.
If they didn't, there'd be no sense planning to play hockey from the middle of April until the middle of June.
The snow is almost gone. The days are long and memories have to be short. It's one opponent for seven games or less before you move on or get moved out from the postseason. Playoff hockey is like nothing else in sports and the Edmonton Oilers, for a fourth straight season, have been invited to the quest for the Cup.
It really is a six-month grind to get the chance to play in the playoffs that every team dreams of when they gather in September for training camps across North America. It seems like more than a year from when the summer began and the preseason came around; from 60 or 70 players who arrive for day one, to the team that's crafted to carry forward when the season begins in October. A lot (and I mean a lot) happens from then until now.
Yet here we are, doing our spring cleaning, while the Oilers are cleaning up their game and readying themselves to spring into action against Los Angeles.

This is a rematch from last season, when Edmonton and LA finished in the exact same spots in the Pacific Division. Edmonton earned home-ice advantage and are intent on using it. They didn't in the beginning of last series, but did by the end, using Rogers Place to secure their place in the second round with a 2-0 Game 7 victory.
Along the way, a lot happened. Darnell Nurse was playing hurt, and eventually so was Leon Draisaitl after a run-in with Mikey Anderson. It didn't hurt his point production, while Connor McDavid elevated his game as needed. So did Evander Kane, whose seven-finger salute in Game 6 was as memorable as the hat-trick he scored to force Game 7. Mike Smith was locked in, and the defence helped lock down an advancement to the Battle of Alberta in the second round.
Twice the Oilers faced elimination games, and twice they brushed off an early playoff exit.

Here we are 12 months later and the Oilers had the best finish of any team in the NHL. A nine-game winning streak to end the season ties a franchise record, with Edmonton dropping one measly single point in their final 15 games of the season (14-0-1).
Edmonton received a franchise-record 88 power-play goals from their historic man advantage (32.4 percent), not to mention the out-of-this-world 153-point regular season by captain McDavid and the 128-point campaign by his second-in-command Draisaitl.
While offence is not a problem, neither is defence. Players were piling up career-highs (see Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Nurse, along with Connor and Leon) and at the same time, found a way to tighten up the other end of the ice. In their last seven games of the season, they allowed six goals as both goaltenders in Stuart Skinner and Jack Campbell pitched shutouts to record the first and second ones of the season for Edmonton.

I honestly cannot remember an Oilers team this playoff ready at the end of a regular season. Whatever to-do list Edmonton might've had, nearly everything (if not everything) was checked off. This team is unbelievably prepared for the journey that awaits them starting Monday night at Rogers Place.
I understand many things have to go right to play four rounds and win 16 times, but the Oilers feel like it's their time and they have a great chance to prove it.
Enjoy the playoffs and thanks for reading this season.