Calgary Flames' goalie Brian Elliott (1) makes a save against the Edmonton Oilers during second period NHL action in Edmonton, Alta., on Saturday January 14, 2017.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Redemption stories can be constructed many different ways and, from Saturday's close encounter in the improving Battle of Alberta, two emerged.
The first involved the Calgary Flames' Brian Elliott, who was signed in the summer to provide the team with answers in goal, but started the season badly, thanks mostly to the Oilers and to Connor McDavid. Elliott lost twice to the Oilers in the first two nights of the season, by scores of 7-4 and 5-3, and McDavid contributed heavily to his misery, scoring six points in all.
It took Elliott months to get his season back on track, but it is now, and the improvements were evident during Calgary's 2-1 shootout loss, in which he made a series of timely, highlight-reel saves to preserve a single point in the standing for the Flames.
With Elliott playing well and partner Chad Johnson a model of night-to-night consistency, the Flames have two reliable goaltenders to choose from and have their best hope to make the playoffs after missing them for six of the past seven years.
Depth in goal is a luxury a dozen teams, including the Oilers, don't have, and it could seriously affect a tight playoff race in a year in which virtually every coach in the league is preoccupied with the tightly compressed schedule and all the back-to-back games they must play.
The other redemptive narrative involved the Oilers' emerging star Leon Draisaitl. He is easy to overlook because of the sheer fascination with McDavid, the NHL's leading scorer who celebrated his 20th birthday Friday.
At the start of last season, the Oilers sent Draisaitl to the minors, this after he'd played 37 games as an NHL rookie the year before. Draisaitl spent most of October, 2015, playing for Bakersfield in the AHL and, upon his return, immediately looked like a ready-for-prime-time player.
Draisaitl was good last year and has been great this year, the perfect complementary piece to McDavid. Draisaitl is tough, skilled and able to elevate his play when it needs to be elevated. He showed a glimpse of his promise during September's World Cup tournament, a young gun who didn't play for the official kids' team only because he is from Germany, and the 23-and-under team was chosen entirely from North Americans.
But he was excellent on a veteran Team Europe and the decision to take him third overall in 2014, behind Aaron Ekblad and Sam Reinhart and ahead of the Flames' Sam Bennett, looks prescient and sound now. The Oilers have made a lot of mistakes at the draft table in the past decade – the primary reason it has been 10 years since they made the NHL playoffs – but Draisaitl isn't one of them.
The Oiler rebuild was originally structured around Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle (and, presumably at one point, they thought they would get a contribution from Nail Yakupov, too).
Yakupov is gone, with virtually nothing coming back in return. Hall was traded, too – replaced by a defensive defenceman, Adam Larsson.
Eberle is struggling to score, though he showed genuine signs of coming out of his slump Saturday, foiled mostly by Elliott. Eberle needs to find the offensive range again to balance the attack.
Nugent-Hopkins is evolving into something else, not a dominant offensive player but a responsible two-way guy and useful in his own way.
Unlike Calgary, the one area of concern remains goal, a position the Oilers are still trying to sort out. Last week, they waived Jonas Gustavsson, who failed to win the confidence of coach Todd McLellan, in favour of Laurent Brossoit. In the meantime, they will rely on Cam Talbot as their defined No. 1 and hope that he stays healthy and doesn't burn out.
The Oilers have been winning the close ones of late. An overtime record of 7-4-1 includes the shootout win over Calgary and back-to-back OT wins over the New Jersey Devils in a five-day span. Skill can do that for you – the ability to win the three-on-three battle when the ice opens up in extra time, or to win the penalty-shot competition if the game remains deadlocked after 65 minutes.
In the playoffs, neither is an option.
In the playoffs, the need to win close, low-scoring, tight games is paramount. That's what Saturday's game looked like, a tight-checking playoff game, with the goalies taking turns making big saves, with Talbot helpfully bailed out twice in the late going when shots by the Flames' Deryk Engelland and Johnny Gaudreau rang off the goal post and stayed out.
The Oilers' date with the Flames on Saturday was billed as the first meaningful game in the Battle of Alberta in 11 years. It had been that long (April of 2006) since the teams played a post-Christmas match, where both teams were actually holding down a playoff spot. Calgary last made it to the Stanley Cup final back in 2004, Edmonton in 2006.
What followed was mostly a lost decade for both franchises. But hope springs eternal and while neither team is quite ready to declare the turnaround complete, the signs are largely positive. It makes the rematch – next Saturday in Calgary – all the more compelling.