LeBrun: Oilers GM Stan Bowman on ‘tense moments,' his goalies and adding final roster pieces

New York Times

7 days ago

EDMONTON — It feels like much longer, but it was just over a month ago, on the night of April 25, that the Edmonton Oilers entered the third period feeling like their season was very much on the line.
They trailed 2-0 in their first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings, and trailed 4-3 entering the final period of Game 3.
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That was a stressful time in Rogers Place, particularly in the Oilers' management box.
'No question, there were some tense moments there,' Oilers general manager Stan Bowman, able to smile about it all four weeks later, said Monday as he began an interview with The Athletic. 'We were trailing in the series, trailing in the game. You know, going down 3-0 (in a series) is never a good story. But I'm an optimistic guy, so until we lose that game, I'm still hopeful. But of course it's concerning. Things can change in a moment.'
Did they ever. Evander Kane and Evan Bouchard scored 10 seconds apart to put the Oilers up 5-4, Connor McDavid and Connor Brown added empty-netters and, well, in some ways the season felt saved.
'With our team, we needed that sort of moment to turn and to gain that momentum,' Bowman said. 'And then once that happens, I feel like your confidence goes up a little bit, and you just start playing a little bit better. But even the next game was a really tough game. I think once we won that Game 4, then I felt like, 'OK.' And we played an excellent Game 5 in L.A.'
True enough, the Oilers needed two third-period goals from the 'Bouch Bomb,' Evan Bouchard, with the second one tying Game 4 at 3-3 with 29 seconds left and setting up Leon Draisaitl's overtime heroics.
That's when Bowman felt the Oilers could breathe and play their game moving forward. And they've really never looked back since.
'Sometimes, it just takes a moment in time to shift the momentum for your team, and the belief you can get things done,' Bowman said. 'Once that happens, your confidence grows.'
What's difficult to fathom, looking back at those moments a month ago, is just how close the Oilers came to running out of time to make all the puzzle pieces finally fit together. This team, which beat L.A. and Vegas and now leads a powerhouse Dallas Stars team 2-1 in the Western Conference final, was never on the ice together during the regular season. And they're still waiting on Mattias Ekholm to return, which should be any day now.
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'We had a lot of guys that hadn't played a lot of hockey heading into Game 1 (of the playoffs),' Bowman said. 'It wasn't just the injured, but like McDavid and Draisaitl and Hyman, they hadn't played the last couple of weeks of the season, either. So we had all these guys who hadn't played much hockey heading into that Game 1 of the L.A. series. And I think it showed.'
John Klingberg, Evander Kane and Trent Frederic were shaking off the rust, too. There were lots of moving parts trying to come together in time for the postseason.
'We had no idea really what we had, as far as lines or who was going to play together. You add that up and I think it took us some time to work our way in,' Bowman said. 'Now, here we are, we've built a little rhythm with our group. Also the players have gotten their confidence. It's a totally different team.'
It is similar in some ways to the Florida Panthers, who dealt with injuries and basically tried to survive the last month of the regular season and then hope they could put it all back together when it mattered.
In the Panthers' case, they hit the ground running in the playoffs, winning the first two games of the first round in Tampa. The Oilers needed a few games to find their bearings.
It shows just how razor-thin the margins are that Edmonton got it together just in time, before the L.A. series got away from them.
The pieces were there, but the Oilers had to wait seven months or so to see the puzzle come together.
'It goes to show,' Bowman said, 'that not only our players, but our coaches, have done an excellent job finding formulas that can get you through to the next game, to build up some momentum, to let the players work their way into the shape that you need to be in, in order to go on a long run.''
It was hardly a secret, even back in the fall, that the Oilers were going to try to bolster the blue line when they could. But I know I'm among a lot of observers who figured they would focus on a defensive, shutdown type. Instead, Bowman added two puck-movers in Klingberg and Jake Walman, with both moves surprising people to some degree.
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And both moves are paying big dividends now, at the most important time of the year.
'That was something that struck me early in the season,' Bowman said in explaining why he went that route. 'We had a slow start, we weren't playing great and we were struggling to score, actually. Our power play wasn't really clicking in October. But the one thing I noticed early on was that I felt we needed … like the strength of our team is that we have some high-powered forwards that can really score. But in order for them to be at their best, I think if you can complement them with guys that can get them the puck at the right times. I felt like we didn't have enough of that as we were constituted early in the year. We have good players, but they just have different attributes.
'So that was the reason that we focused early on, on Klingberg. We started talking to him in November, knowing he wouldn't be back (from injury) for a while,' added Bowman. 'But that was the style of player that I thought would really complement our group. Of course, you think of the defensive side, but I thought we defended well as a team. I think our coaches do a good job structuring it where we don't spend a ton of time in the D-zone. But then that moment where you stop a play and you got to transition the puck — who's good at doing that — that was the reason we were focused on Klingberg.''
And then the Oilers doubled down on that with Walman before the trade deadline.
'Walman is along the same lines, because I believed in the group we had on the defensive side. I felt if we could add to it, this was sort of the look that I was hoping would come to be,' Bowman said. 'Things don't always work the way you envision them. This one did, in the sense that these guys have added a lot to our attack and they've also been good partners.'
That surprised Bowman, because he didn't envision Walman and Klingberg playing together.
'But that's a credit to (assistant coach) Paul Coffey for trying different things and finding something that seems to work well,' he said.
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Let's be real. The fact that the Oilers are two wins away from the Stanley Cup Final without having Ekholm yet in these playoffs cannot be understated as an achievement. All of which points to the job their six blueliners have done without him — but also the entire team.
'Well, I think it shows we've had a lot of different contributions,' Bowman said. 'Lately, it's been our goaltender. He's taken a lot of criticism. But the goaltending in general. Calvin Pickard came in and played great and won some huge games, and then Stuart (Skinner). But also we've had a lot of depth scoring.'
Of course, McDavid and Draisaitl have had major impacts as always, Bowman added, but it's been more of a team approach.
'Which has allowed us to be, I would say, harder to game plan against, maybe, than in the past where all of the scoring was concentrated in a few players,' Bowman said. 'Now I think we look at our team — where maybe you shut down those guys for a few periods but other groups are stepping up. That's what ultimately could lead your team to having success.'
As Bowman mentioned, both goalies have had key moments during this run. All of which goes back to something Bowman told me during a February interview, in which he said he had no plans to upgrade the goaltending ahead of the March 7 trade deadline.
That wasn't met with enthusiasm from some segments of the Oilers' fan base. But Bowman was steadfast in his belief that it wasn't an area he needed to attempt to upgrade.
'No, I mean, you talk to the players and you talk to the coaches, they have a lot of confidence in these guys,' Bowman said. 'At the end of the day, the players decide this, right? It's the guys that are on the ice, and they have confidence in the guys we have, both in Pickard and Skinner. I think when you have a belief from your team that they're going to get the job done for you, then you don't have to focus on that exclusively.
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'So a lot of it just goes to the belief in our team,' he added. 'We didn't want to be a team that relies on just one thing to win. We wanted to have a few different ways to win. I think we've seen that in these playoffs, we've won a variety of different styles of game, and I think that's what you need to have success.'
And, in reality, there was no top-10 NHL goalie available on the trade market. There was no one Bowman felt was a guaranteed upgrade over what they had.
'The goaltending is a very interesting position,' Bowman said. 'On the one hand, it's very important, but on the other hand, it's not like there's 30 No. 1 goalies in the world. There's a handful, and then there's other guys who can do the job you need them to do. Across the league, you're looking at that.'
As we wrapped up our interview on Monday while the Oilers practiced, I asked Bowman what he had learned about this team since taking over last summer, now that he's got a better handle on the players, especially given how they navigated some ups and downs all season.
'I think it all starts at the top with your leaders, Connor and Leon and Nuge and Hyman and Ekholm. Those guys were really very, very consistent all year long,' Bowman said. 'I think when you have a group of players at that talent level that are so consistent in their performance … Like, you can sometimes have some guys down in the lineup that are consistent and they bring it every night, but they don't do enough to impact the game. But the guys I just mentioned, they're your top players and (when) they're consistently bringing it, then you have the ability to weather the storm when there's going to be ups and downs.
'Because you know you have that every night,' Bowman added. 'Those guys make such a difference. Not only with how they play and score or defend, but just their impact on the rest of the team. Great leaders, great teammates, guys that everyone else looks up to and believes in.'
Another thing Bowman wanted to add was about the coaching staff.
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'I've been really impressed with their performance this year,' Bowman said. 'To be able to stay composed and not get rattled — we had a lot of challenges throughout the year, but I think Kris (Knoblauch) deserves a lot of credit for the way that he managed this group. And he's got a really good knack for adjustments, not wholesale changes but in-game adjustments, game-to-game adjustments, and I think he gets the most out of the players.
'So that's something that I don't think gets enough attention: the job that our coaching staff has done to get us where we are today. There's a lot of work ahead of us. But they've put us in a good spot to keep pushing forward.'