The Edmonton Oilers Suffered A Third Period Collapse
from Robert Tychkowski of the Edmonton Journal,
We all saw it. Every agonizing second. We watched the replays, listened to the interviews and dissected the expert analysis.
But anyone who witnessed the Edmonton Oilers slow motion car wreck Sunday in Winnipeg still has no idea what the hell happened.
Catastrophic third-period collapse all but end Edmonton Oilers' season
It was over. They had already won Game 3. They closed the deficit to 2-1. The message was sent. The series was back on. The Oilers looked great.
Then, inexplicably, out of nowhere in a game they had ruled for 50 minutes, the Oilers spit up all of it in a humiliating, jaw-dropping catastrophic implosion that all but ended their season.
A 4-1 lead with less than 10 minutes to play in the third period blew up in their faces like one of those dye packs the banks use to catch stupid robbers.
“Winning is hard and there are painful lessons you need to learn to win,” said head coach Dave Tippett, after the Winnipeg Jets somehow came back to win 5-4 in overtime, taking a 3-0 death grip on the series and leaving the Oilers to write another playoff tragedy to go with last year’s bubble exit.
“Tonight, we learned some hard lessons on what not to do to win in the playoffs. We did enough good things in this game to win, but we gave a game away.
“It’s disappointing because we haven’t been that team all year, we’ve done a good job of closing things out. It’s disappointing that we did some of the things we did tonight. Now we’ll see how we respond.”
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