Connor McDavid<\/a> and the gang.<\/p>\n\u201cThere is a very big respect for each other going to the Cup Finals the last two years. But whenever that happens, it doesn\u2019t matter who you play in a playoff series, there is going to be dislike.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when you play a team two years in a row, it doesn\u2019t matter what round it\u2019s in, the dislike just seems to ramp up.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, with that, Tkachuk tipped his hat and wished Edmonton the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve probably become our No. 1 rival just because of the magnitude of the games and where we\u2019ve played them and the intensity of the last two playoffs. Great team over there, some incredible players and I\u2019m sure they\u2019re going to be right back there this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the Oilers, the feeling is respect and dislike is the same, but they\u2019re still alive in the playoff race and have bigger cats to catch than the Panthers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intensity right now is for making the playoffs,\u201d said head coach Kris Knoblauch. \u201cWe have a lot of teams in the Pacific division that we want to either catch or teams below us. That\u2019s where our focus is, winning hockey games so that we can get to the playoffs and hopefully have another playoff run.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who the opposition is right now, the games are so important we need to win as many as possible. Yes, it\u2019s a team that we saw in the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row but right now it\u2019s so important to look at the standings.\u201d<\/p>\n
E-mail:\u00a0rtychkowski@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He knows the feeling is pretty far from mutual, but Matthew Tkachuk really has a soft spot for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[254,895,155,198,146,5300,57,5,3144,94,4,24,864,83,300,157],"class_list":["post-512329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton-oilers","tag-brad-marchand","tag-calgary","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-edmontonoilers","tag-florida-panthers","tag-hockey","tag-jake-walman","tag-matthew-tkachuk","tag-nhl","tag-oilers","tag-playoff-series","tag-sam-bennett","tag-stanley-cup-finals","tag-stuart-skinner"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116258726511132136","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}