from Robert Tychkowski of the Edmonton Journal,

“We started doing it last year, started to figure out the way we wanted to play,” said forward Leon Draisaitl. “We have a great goalie and we’re all buying into the system, and it really showed in the first game. That’s what we’re trying to do even better than last year. We know that offence comes from good defence.”

Getting Edmonton’s skill players to buy into the defence-first philosophy had been an ongoing, and losing, battle for 10 years. Too often, their defensive structure looked like a cross between panicked parents trying to find lost children in a grocery store and drunk fans chasing home-run balls in the centre-field bleachers.

It took a long time and a significant personnel change, but they finally figured things out.

“Definitely,” said goalie Cam Talbot, whose life is being made much easier by the shift in philosophy. “We’ve gone leaps and bounds from my first season here. Everyone thinks that we’re just a high-powered offence, but we’re very structured in our own zone. Give our guys a lot of credit for really buying into Todd’s system.”

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