The idea of the playoff spoiler is more myth than reality, a media concoction, rarely based in fact.
Seriously, the idea that an NHL team, long removed from the playoff picture, would sit around, before the game, thinking if they can't be in the postseason, maybe they can spoil the party for someone else is wishful thinking.
"If you knock one team out of the playoffs, then another team's getting in," explained the arithmetically inclined Edmonton Oilers forward Taylor Hall. "You're not dwindling the playoffs down to four teams when you beat teams, so …"
So no.
The only real motivation when playing out the string is to leave a positive impression for next year, for the players who actually want to return.
If there happens to be collateral damage along the way – and you take down a team that desperately needs the two points – great.
But once the 1,230-game 2014-15 regular season is over, it won't matter much to the Oilers' players if it's the Calgary Flames or the Winnipeg Jets or the Los Angeles Kings on the outside of the Western Conference playoff picture, looking in.
The only thing that will matter – and the only thing that should matter – is that the Oilers have endured another lost season, their ninth in a row outside the playoffs.
As the Oilers prepare to start their final home stand of the season, with a Saturday game against their once arch-rivals, the Flames, there is a temptation to sift through the wreckage and see what, if any, positives may have emerged.
In September, during the annual player media tour in New York, Hall had spoken optimistically about how stability in goal and behind the bench, along with a couple of free-agent signings on the blueline, might make a difference and finally correct the Oilers' uneven course.
Instead, the Oilers have leaked goals again – 13 in two one-sided losses to the Kings and the Anaheim Ducks this past week – and they are right down there, with fellow lottery contenders, the Buffalo Sabres, challenging again for the worst defensive record in the league.
They changed coaches again, too, to Todd Nelson from Dallas Eakins, and while they'd been on a modest 5-2-2 surge as March ended, they produced two of the worst games of the Nelson era to begin April – 5-1 and 8-2 losses on consecutive nights to the Ducks and the Kings, erasing any positive vibe that may have been building.
Following the Kings' game, in a glum Oilers' dressing room, I fielded the question to Jordan Eberle, one of the few bright spots on the team: What, if anything, was there left to play for in what remained of the disappointing 2014-15 season?
"For pride," Eberle answered. "We're professional hockey players. You go out and give that effort. They [the Kings] treated us like a junior team. They were pushing us around. They were winning battles. They were getting to the front of our net. We couldn't get to theirs.
"You're a professional hockey player," Eberle repeated, his anger bubbling just below the surface. "You have to be able to play through whatever it is. Guys are playing for jobs. You go out there and you get embarrassed like that, you have to be in a situation where guys are going to take your spot. It's that simple. In the AHL, there's a ton of good hockey players who'd love to be here. You do that … it's just embarrassing.
"I have no words to describe it."
It remains to be seen how many of the Oilers' solutions are in the AHL, or are developing elsewhere. Next year, Leon Draisaitl, the third-overall pick in the 2014 NHL entry draft, will arrive and likely stick, so that's a big body down the middle to support Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who's had a quietly effective second half and is one of the top NHL forwards in time on ice.
Eberle, too, has been on something of a roll lately with 14 points in his past 11 games. Most Canadian hockey fans, when they think of Eberle, remember all those key goals he scored for the world junior team, back before losing at the professional level set in.
The fear, and the danger, of all that losing is that it can sometimes become a habit, just as winning is a habit. Losing can numb the mind and leech the motivation out of a player, after a time.
The fire still seems to burn inside Eberle and a handful of others; it will be interesting to see what changes general manager Craig MacTavish has in mind this summer, after all of last year's tweaking produced little change in the overall result. Does he fire a coach who doesn't need to be fired, to hire someone with a lengthier résumé? Does he try to pluck another netminding prospect out of a different organization, or is the solution to do what the Florida Panthers did and hand the reins over to the steady, experienced hand – in their case, Roberto Luongo, someone who has helped mask some of their youthful indiscretions?
The Oilers are on pace to finish with the third-worst record in the NHL for the second consecutive year. Almost a decade into the rebuild, the only goaltender they've drafted and developed, Devan Dubnyk, is starring for the playoff-bound Minnesota Wild. Collectively, they still don't play defence very well – and on a team that's supposed to have some offensive chops, they are also second last in the conference in scoring.
The key stat – the differential between goals for and goals against – now sits at a chilly minus-80 for Edmonton.
Publicly, Nelson did well to say little inflammatory about the back-to-back debacles. You can see why the players like to play for him. He seems to be a straight shooter, not glib, or full of one-liners, just honest and old-fashioned. Nelson described the Ducks and the Kings as the standard, the benchmark, for the conference – one, a team with the best record in the West, the other the defending Stanley Cup champion – and it is clear, from the evidence of the two nights, the Oilers are a long way from competing at that level.
"We thought we'd been playing a harder game; we thought we were a much harder team to play against," said Hall, who is in the lineup again after another year undermined by injury, the third time in five professional seasons he's missed significant game action. With 36 points in 49 games, after scoring 80 in 75 a year ago, this is a season Hall will gladly forget.
"We have some things to learn, and some things to work on," he said.
As for Saturday's date with the Flames, who are in the playoff hunt and could really use the two points, the motivation to defeat them largely comes from the fact that they haven't done so all season.
Once upon a time, Calgary-Edmonton was one of the NHL's greatest rivalries because it featured two of the NHL's greatest teams.
Real rivalries can't just be based on the accident of geography.
There has to be more than that – something tangible at stake, a history of playoff competition, of teams playing at the highest level, caring about the outcome, genuinely upset if a game doesn't go their way.
It hasn't been that way for a long time now in the Battle of Alberta and, based on the recent evidence, it's going to be a while before it gets that way again – if it ever does, or can.