All of our hopes now rest on Don Cherry
We’re down to the wire hockey-wise, as within a few short hours from now the Edmonton Oilers will be facing off against the Carolina Hurricanes for what might very well be the last game of the Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s a best of seven-games series, and Carolina is already ahead three games to one. That means Carolina only needs to win one of the next three scheduled games in order to capture the Cup, whereas Edmonton would have to win all of them. For Canadian hockey fans like myself who have found themselves cheering for Edmonton as the last Canadian team alive in the playoffs, the odds are not in our favour.
But then, Edmonton is apparently used to overcoming rough odds. I was too busy watching the Montreal Canadiens in the first series, and then the Ottawa Senators in the second, but I guess Edmonton did some amazing things in both of those in their end of the league. Edmonton barely made it into the playoffs at all after having a fairly lackluster regular season, and then toppled the top-ranked Detroit Redwings, the San Jose Sharks and finally the Anaheim Mighty Ducks to make it to where they are now. None of those victories were very predictable, so there’s still something to hope for tonight.
At the beginning of this series against Carolina, in fact, I heard two conflicting predictions as to the outcome. My Dad opined that historically, whenever the Montreal Canadiens are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, whichever team knocks them out goes on to win the Cup. This year, the Canadiens were beaten four games to two by none other than the Carolina Hurricanes, in the very first round. Don Cherry disagreed with my Dad, and instead predicted with his usual gusto that Edmonton would be the eventual winners. Of course, both of these were made before Edmonton’s star goalie Dwayne Roloson was injured in the first game of this series, having his elbow broken and being scratched for the rest of the games. I can only hope that Cherry’s vision of the future will hold true in spite of the loss of Roloson’s, and that tonight will be a knock-put victory for the Oilers.
