FEATURE: Edmonton is where Ekholm wants to make his mark

EDMONTON, AB -Bearing the visible scars of the postseason battles won and lost, Mattias Ekholm enters the offseason disappointed but bullish on what his future holds in the Blue & Orange.

The tenacious Oilers defenceman was sporting a wicked cut and blackened eye, all framed by his thick blonde beard, as he discussed his first playoff run as a member of the Oilers at Tuesday's year-end media availability.

"I look a little rough, but yeah, got a high-stick there late in the last game we played, so that was what it was," Ekholm said discussing his shiner. "Nice little gift to go into the summer with, but I'm feeling alright. So it's all good, I guess."

Ekholm was brought in to be the missing piece for an Oilers squad on the brink of a playoff breakthrough, and for the most part he was. After Ekholm was acquired the Oilers sported the league's best record at 18-2-1 including a final 15 games where they suffered just a single overtime loss heading into the playoffs.

However, the cruel reality of the NHL postseason is that only one team will be atop the summit once the final game is played. All scoring records and team accolades are thrown out the window in tournament dictated by both performance and luck. The Oilers led in all six games of their second-round series against the Golden Knights, but between a few untimely bounces and some responsible and opportunistic play by Vegas, they sat in front of the media on Tuesday instead of preparing for a Western Conference Final matchup with the Dallas Stars.

Even though Ekholm and the team fell short of their year-end goals, the Swedish blueliner is optimistic about what his future as a member of the Edmonton Oilers holds.

"It's been really great for me, obviously coming from Nashville where we were selling at the time," Ekholm said. "Everyone expects to win, everybody thinks we should win. We have a team here that is capable of doing it. We obviously fell short, but to me [the team] is awesome and it's really exciting. That opportunity is something that I will cherish this summer and work even harder on my game and come back this fall to be able to compete even harder. I think we have what it takes in the room, it's just a matter of getting it out."

Ekholm has a unique perspective of what a playoff team looks like and how difficult it truly is to break through a league of 32 teams filled with the world's best players. The 32-year-old has made the postseason in almost every year of his career, with his rookie season being the only outlier. Ekholm has witnessed a President's Trophy winning Nashville Predators suffer a similar fate as the Oilers this season, getting unceremoniously bounced in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He has also played in a Stanley Cup finals, and knows the qualities and will a team needs if they hope to make it to the pinnacle.

"I think we're really close. I think if you compare the two, I think it's a lot different because in Nashville we had somewhat of a top-four defence that we kind of built it around," Ekholm said. "Here you have two of the best players in the world up front that you kind of build it around."

Ekholm believes the path for this team to finally achieve their lofty goals lays in their own end of the ice, especially when it comes to the playoffs. The Oilers finished the regular season with a 42-7-4 record when they allowed fewer than four goals in a game. In the playoffs, the Oilers allowed four or more goals seven times and finished with a 2-5 record. Edmonton can run-and-gun with the best of them, finishing the year with an NHL-leading 325 goals, but the playoffs require a little more discipline and patience.

"We know we played a good team in Vegas, and that obviously is no fun to lose against, but at times I feel like we can better as a team, maybe not by trying to win," Ekholm said. "It sounds weird, we have to win the games, but at times you just have to not lose. You got to find a way where you win 1-0 or 2-1. You just hold on to a game and win it, because in this series, I felt like the games we won we had to score four or five, or if we didn't, we held them off."

"At times, and this is coming back to [my time in] Nashville, there was more a mindset of: if we get two or three chances to score, we've got to capitalize. But other than that, just play good defence and try to keep them on the outside and not have them score."

Ekholm says he is excited to be a key catalyst of the Oilers growth in the defensive end and making their opposition truly earn their goals. He hopes a full training camp, pre-season, and 82 games of intense regular season hockey is enough to truly make his mark on an Oilers team that has all the pieces of a Stanley Cup Champion, but just needs to put them together in the right way.

The Swedish defenceman is also given the confidence that this Oilers squad is capable of reaching its zenith, because he knows this team has something that no other team can boast.

"I think what this team has is something that you can't just go out and find," Ekholm said. "I think a good structure defensively is something you can work on and then get better on as a team, and I think we will, but finding the top two players in the world, you don't just go around the corner and find them. We have them. So, I think it's a great opportunity. I think this team is as close as I've ever been."

The presence of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, in combination with a core rooted in its prime, gives Ekholm that assurance that the Edmonton Oilers are the right place at the right time for the 11-year veteran.

"I wouldn't change this to go to any other team in the league, and I stand behind that 100 per cent," he said. "Everybody in this team just bleeds to win and that's something that's really awesome to be a part of, especially at the point of my career where I am now. I'm 33 here in a couple of days and I'm not getting any younger, but I still think I have a lot left in me, and the hunger is still there. I haven't won yet.

"To me, I think the culture [here] is great. I think that everybody says the right things, everybody does the right things. It's just a matter of getting everything together. And again, we played a really good team in the second round, but I also think we're a really good team and we just got to make sure we get those margins on our side."