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When we look at the Edmonton Oilers and their failure of 2017-18, it’s evident that the seeds of that failure were planted partly by both the failure and success the Oilers had against the Anaheim Ducks in the 2017 playoffs.

Edmonton — a team that had not made the playoffs in the decade and had been monumentally bad in that time period — took the powerful Ducks to seven games. In doing so, Edmonton came within one game of making the NHL’s Final Four. Perhaps if the refereeing had been competent in the series, the Oilers would have advanced.

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Today, talking about that series and reflecting on how things had gone so bad, Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli toldTSN’s Ryan Rishaug that like most observers he had expected Edmonton to pick up where it left off in the Anaheim series.

But not to be.

It’s my own hypothesis that five things that came about in relation to that Ducks series greatly impacted the Oilers this year, all of them in negative fashion.