'We Had a Bit of a Scare': Kris Knoblauch Reveals Which Defender Battled Illness For Entire Vancouver Canucks Series

Edmonton Oilers' head coach spoke to the media on Saturday and dropped a revelation.

EDMONTON -- "Cup or bust."

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That was the phrase that both Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid and teammate Leon Draisaitl both said at their exit interviews last summer. They are now one win away from winning the Stanley Cup.

The laundry list of injuries is typically long after a deep playoff run. Very rarely does something injury related get spoken about in detail during the postseason.

That makes Kris Knoblauch's revelation during his media scrum yesterday even more surprising.

He was asked about how the "Swedish trio" have been playing in the Cup Final. That trio being Mattias Ekholm, Philip Broberg and Mattias Janmark. He said something about one of them that made my ears perk up, "Ekky (Ekholm) has been tremendous throughout the whole regular season and throughout the playoffs. In the playoffs we had a bit of a scare, he was sick through one series."

"He was really under the weather for almost all of it, but he came and played some really good hockey for us."

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Ekholm was a game-time decision for at least one game of the Vancouver Canucks series. Now Knoblauch has confirmed that he was sick for that entire series and played through it.

Ekholm has been an absolute revelation for the Oilers. He's had a career revival offensively too. During the regular season he set new career highs for points (45) and goals (11).

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His offensive contributions in the postseason have been special. He needs one more point to tie his career high of 11 playoff points. Ekholm has already broken his career high for goals in the playoffs with the five he has heading to Game seven.

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