I wanted to get to this on Tuesday after the Edmonton game, but it’s not really a time-sensitive piece. There was a lot of frustration shared by Sens fans on Tuesday’s show about how they lost to the worst team in the Western Conference. While that may be true, don’t count on the Oilers being the worst team in hockey for too much longer thanks to the dynamic duo of Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle.
Being in Ottawa, of course we’re going to focus on what the Sens did wrong to lose the valuable two points, but I think a lot of people were guilty of having too much of a one-sided focus. Give credit to what the young Oilers were able to do in weathering the storm in the opening period, gaining traction in the second and taking over in the third.
I made it a point of focusing solely on Hall, Eberle and Magnus Paajarvi throughout this game in order to make a personal assessment on whether these three were truly ready to take the proper steps over the next couple of years and take their team from being a bottom-feeder to a playoff contender. After the 60 minutes I saw on Monday night, I would say they’re certainly ready.
I’ve always believed that an elite player in any sport goes through three stages of their career before heading to retirement. The first stage and most difficult involves a player relying on his size, strength and natural ability to get him through the learning curve that is unavoidable as knowledge and experience are gained. Fatigue is not going to be a factor for any youngster, but settling down a younger player so that they aren’t thinking or playing the game at 100 miles per hour is certainly something that is very difficult and is often times impossible to do.
The second stage and most productive is when the player is at his physical prime and has enough knowledge and experience that he can play and think the game at a much faster pace without being overwhelmed. If you have an abundance of these kind of players on your team, you’ve got a great chance at being successful, being a winner and possibly even a champion.
The third and final stage involves older players that have so much knowledge and experience that they can compensate and even overcome the physical liabilities they now have due to age, injury and fatigue. The player can still be successful, but there’s a point where he’ll hit the wall and his skills will be so diminished that retirement is imminent.
Right now, there are a ton of Oilers that are a part of the first stage of this process. You can see that they have a million ideas running through their head and their body is reacting to all of those ideas, but in the end, it’s all wasted energy. The scary part for the rest of the NHL will be when all of these youngsters finally get it and have body and mind in sync with one another to become the complete package.