Trap game for Edmonton Oilers? Most definitely but there's a way out of Game 6 booby trap

Article content Edmonton Oilers fans have reached a new euphoric high. NHL commentators have rarely been so bullish on the team. And if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a hundred times now, both before and after Edmonton’s improbable win in Florida over the Panthers, that a win in Game 5 for Edmonton would mean the 2024 Stanley Cup Final is DEFINITELY going to Game 7, that the Edmonton Oilers are going to ride on the roar of the crowd in the cauldron of this city’s downtown arena and sweep into the final game.

All this speaks of one thing: Game 6 in Edmonton is most definitely a trap game for the Oilers, a psychological booby trap ready to blow up their Stanley Cup dreams, just as those same dreams were blown up in Game 6 against Vegas last season, a game that also had great expectations of an Oilers victory. We all know how that ended, the Oilers beating themselves with iffy defensive tactics and even worse wild-eyed, puck-chasing, puck-watching defensive zone non-execution, with Edmonton getting booted by VGK from the 2024 playoffs. Of course, there’s a way for the Oilers themselves to defuse this ticking time bomb.

And it’s also the case that all of the rash optimism around Friday’s Game 6 is as well-meaning as it is dangerous. On the one hand we have hockey’s wild man Paul “Biz Nasty” Bissonnette of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast ramping up expectations, posting, “Just landed in Edmonton. Friday will be biblical.

McJesus will rise again.” Then the.