BLOG: Oilers ready to ramp up the physicality

EDMONTON, AB -As the temperature goes up outside of Rogers Place, the heat inside is about to get raised as well.
It's playoff time in Edmonton. Things are about to get physical starting Monday night.
"I think going to the playoffs, every team ramps up their physicality for sure. We're a bigger team than we have been in the past, doesn't mean that we're going to be gooning it up or anything, it's just we're going to be physical," Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said after Sunday's practice at the Downtown Community Arena. "We're going to make it hard for their offensive players to play against us. I think our D-men have done a great job of that and without sacrificing making plays and making skilled plays out there. I think once you get to the playoffs, the physicality just naturally ramps up."
"I think this time of year, everything gets magnified," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said. "Emotions get magnified, little plays in the game get magnified -- for us, I've been quite pleased with our level of emotional attachment to hockey games this year. I don't worry about that. I think we have the leaders in our dressing room that will set the tone with a measure of physicality."

It doesn't hurt that the Oilers have drawn the Los Angeles Kings in Round 1. In the last two games against the Pacific Division rival, the Oilers have racked up a whopping 71 hits while stymying the Kings offence to only a single goal.
The games have been hard fought battles, which is to be expected coming from a pair of division rivals with recent postseason history.
"You play within your own division. You play each other a lot of times. Guys have been around here for eight to ten years, have played against a lot of guys over there that have been around even longer than that, So you start to definitely build up," Darnell Nurse said about the intensity between the two first-round opponents. "There's a very competitive nature out there when we play against each other. The more exposure that we get to each other with playoff rounds and essentially your hockey life is on the line here for the season, so there's a lot of heat and emotion that goes into those games."
Leading the way in the hit brigade over the last two games versus Los Angeles is Evander Kane, who was absent from the first two contests between the squads. The power forward has 16 of the Oilers 71 body checks laid against the Kings, which is exactly what is expected from the playoff dynamo.
"I mean, it'd be interesting to go look up at how many finished checks he had in those games, but he was a physical force," Woodcroft said. "When Evander is in our lineup, it kind of slots people in the proper places, and as I said, he's a warrior. This is his time of year."

Kane was a menace for the Kings in last year's postseason. The sniper notched seven goals and nine points in the seven-game series, peppering the Los Angeles netminders with 34 shots. The 31-year-old famously held up seven fingers after scoring his second goal of Game 6, to push the series to a deciding final game in Edmonton. When asked this morning if these are the type of games that suits his style of game, Kane played it pretty coy.
"I think hockey suits me pretty well," Kane joked. "But these are the games that it's not even about being easy to get up for, you're on. You have to be ready to go because every play matters, every period matters, every game matters. So again, these are moments that you look forward to and being in a Canadian market in a place like Edmonton with the group we have, it's exciting."