The air of playoff hockey was around Sunday\u2019s practice for the Oilers\u2019 coaches and players, who traded the grind of the regular season for the excitement of the postseason after learning over two straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final that this is when it matters the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could tell the guys were itching for the playoffs to start, and it’s a long season for any team in the NHL,\u201d Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said. \u201cThere are a lot of games, but it’s even longer when you play as long as you have the last two years, playing until the end of June and then a couple months later, you’re back at it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as these guys love playing the game, are competitive and want to win every single night, it is difficult to get up for those long stretches, especially when they’re looking at the playoffs and what they can do. Everyone’s excited and ready for this.\u00a0 It’s been on their mind for a while. I think we’ve got another level to reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
A player who looks close to making his return to the playoffs (and the lineup) based on Sunday’s final full-team skate is Leon Draisaitl, who was skating between Vasily Podkolzin and Kasperi Kapanen on the second line for the second practice in a row.<\/p>\n
Draisaitl missed the final 14 games of the regular season with an injury he sustained from a hit taken during a 3-1 win over the Nashville Predators on Mar. 15, but has been back practicing since the start of Edmonton’s final homestand of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Both\u00a0the German and Coach Knoblauch were non-committal about his Game 1 status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The air of playoff hockey was around Sunday\u2019s practice for the Oilers\u2019 coaches and players, who traded the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[198,146,5300,5,4,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-556498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-edmonton","9":"tag-edmonton-oilers","10":"tag-edmontonoilers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-oilers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116434851828676725","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556498","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=556498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}