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"Sharks can't swim in Oil" - Sign seen at game six

Well... it looks like I underestimated the Oilers once more, thanks to their not-really-that surprising win over the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday night. After they lost the first two games, many people - myself included - were fairly quick to count the Oilers out and were somewhat surprised when they turned it around in games three and four. After all, they Oilers were playing a goalie that wasn't generally considered among the hockey elite - and maybe not even in most people's top-20 list at the beginning of the season - against the team that had two scoring leaders among it's staff.

Either way, it was game four that turned this series on it's head and really shifted the momentum to Edmonton - the Sharks managed to bungle a 2-0 and 3-1 leads as Edmonton exploded for the 3-6 win, with the majority of their goals coming in the second half of the game, including one where Sergei Samsonov stole the puck from Toskala on a botched attempt to clear the puck.

Game Five was more of the same for the Sharks, who were able to tie the game up in the third before falling apart and losing once more, 6 to 3.

Going into game six, the Sharks coach - Ron Wilson - tried to take some of the pressure off of his team by insisting at a press conference that the pressure was really on the Oilers, that they "still had to finish this series..." - whereas Oilers coach Craig MacTavish was pretty quiet, as he knew who was in the lead.

Going into game six, the Oilers were the general favorites - but just barely. They were facing a team that could score and had it's back to the wall with nothing to lose - but the Sharks were also a team that can collapse just as well as they had in the last two games.

That said, game six managed to reinforce one of my favorite theories - that game sixes tend to be the most exciting games in a best-of-seven. This was a 2-0 final score, but it was 1-0 for the majority of the game; it was a tight, fast and genuinely exciting game, the kind that will surely be on ESPN Classic on a Monday night not too far in the future...

"The Oilers ... Are peaking at the right time." - AP wires, May 18th 2006

Right - just like that other team that peaked at just the right time this year: The Pittsburgh Steelers, who came into the 2005/06 NFL playoffs as the lowest seed, yet surprised three teams in a row before everybody realized just how good they were.

Is it too early to compare them to that team? Or how about to the 2003 Minnesota Wild, who surprised three teams en route to the Western Finals where they lost)? Or to the 1993 Toronto Maple Leafs, who won two closely fought seven-game series against the Detroit Red Wings and the St. Louis Blues before they ran out of gas in Game Six of the Western Finals and fell apart in game seven... well, let's just get away from these ugly comparisons to teams that were good - just not good enough.

Already it can be argued that even in losing to the Ducks in the Western Finals, the Oilers were a success by upsetting two heavily favored teams - but in what is looking more and more like the year of the Underdog (The Steelers winning in Detroit, George Mason in the final four, the Suns coming back from a 3-1 series deficit) what fun is there to be had in losing?