Oilers-Jets meet in the playoffs for a 2nd time in 4 years

The season is over, the dust has settled, the fat lady has sang, and the Oilers have been given an opportunity to avenge a defeat to the Jets from 2017.

Depite being a top team during his tenure, the Oilers have had miserable playoff luck, only winning 1 series in the last three years they have qualified. This will be the 4th year, and they may have found a composition that has the league taking notice.

"This is a different team than the team in 2017 the the Jets faced, we are balanced, deep, confident, and surprisingly good looking in no small part to myself" said GM Braithwaite

The Jets took out the Oilers in 6 games back in 2017, this marked the first time the Oilers made playoffs in 5 seasons, and was GM Braithwaites signal to end the rebuild. Since then the Oilers have taken the loss as a learning experience, coming back in following years as a stronger team, ready to deal it's damage in the playoffs. But that hasn't quite come to fruitition, as the Oilers have only squeeked out one playoff victory in that time frame. After winning the presidents trophy as the best regular season team in the league, many wonder if this season is the Oileers best opportunity to make some noise

The Jets on the other hand have some of the best players in the league on their roster including a trio of Nathan Mackinnon, Leon Draisaitl, and Nikita Kucherov. Facing off against those three feels like no reward for finishing top in the conference, but the Oilers are ready to play.The Jets came out of the gate slow and struggled to string wins together, however in the latter half of the year, they traded their starting goaltender, and let a committee take over the team, which saw enough results to land them in the last wild card spot

The season series for the Oilers-Jets ended in a 3-1 win for the Oilers, with their first three meetings being 4-2, 3-1, 5-2 respectively, and the Jets taking the last game against the Oilers 3-2 in a shootout. Only the last game came against a rejuvinised Jets team.

"We feel we aren't playing a WC2 quality team, the Jets have looked like a different beast since the trade deadline. We are going to have to bring out A game to come out on this series" said GM Braithwaite

They will have to do more than that. The keys to victory can be described as below

Oilers

-Shut down the Jets top players

-Get shots and test the questionable Winnipeg goaltending early and Often

-Depth players have to beat the Winnipeg depth players

Jets

-Win the special teams fight

-Get the top line away from Barkov and Toews

-play tight system defence

Either way, this revenge series promises to be a good one