Edmonton Oilers veterans have been waiting long time for this as Cup final return looms
It seems like forever ago, now that the Edmonton Oilers are steamrolling their way through the playoffs, but it was just a few weeks ago that they were hanging by a thread.
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Their playoffs were almost over before they started.
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They were down 2-0 to the Los Angeles Kings, they'd given up 12 goals, their starting goalie lost the net, the penalty kill surrendered five goals, they didn't have Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard was going from bad to worse.
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The Oilers were fulfilling everyone's pre-playoff prophecy that predicted they'd be bowing out in the first round.
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They've gone 11-2 since, treating the 105-point L.A. Kings, the 110-point Vegas Golden Knights and the 106-point Dallas Stars like punching bags.
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They won four in a row to dump the Kings, four out of five to eliminate Vegas and are now 3-1 up on the Dallas Stars, one win away from their second straight Stanley cup final.
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It has been a run for the ages. And for veterans like 40-year-old Corey Perry, one of the oldest players in the league, and 32-year-old Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the longest-serving member of the Oilers, this is as much fun as hockey gets.
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'It just keeps getting better and better, it's unbelievable,' said Nugent-Hopkins, who has been in Edmonton for 959 regular-season games, 90 more in the playoffs and can't imagine lacing it up anywhere else.
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'It's kind of hard to wrap your head around sometimes how unbelievable this fan base is. It seems like every series and every game they get louder in there. There are more people out on the streets before and after and you feel the support.'
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In his 14 years as an Oiler, Nugent-Hopkins has been though 10 head coaches, five general managers, three rebuilds, seven missed playoffs, two first-round exits and one Stanley Cup Final.
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'When I first came in, we were obviously a struggling team but you never really felt the negativity too much in the city,' he said.
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'There was still a lot of positivity and a lot of hope. Now we're one win away from going to back-to-back Stanley Cup finals and this is as exciting as it gets for us as a team and also for the fan base that stuck around for a lot of years.
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'It never gets old, it just keeps getting better.'
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Perry has been to five Stanley Cup finals in his 20-year career, including last year with Edmonton and three ill-fated trips in a row with Dallas, Montreal and Tampa Bay in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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He won a ring in his rookie season with Anaheim and it would be a perfect bookend to his career get another one in 2025.
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'This is why we play the game,' said the ageless wonder, whose six post-season goals are second only to Leon Draisaitl. 'This is why you put the work in in the summer. When you're seven years old playing on the street, this is what we play. We're kids. This is fun.'
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