LOS ANGELES — If you don’t know who Owen Michaels is, don’t feel bad.

Barely anyone inside the Edmonton Oilers dressing room knew who he was either, three weeks ago.

Then as new head coach Mike Babcock ran through daily video clips after the pre-season games, showing the moments where players were executing his system — and the places where they were not — everyone started to notice something.

All the good clips had this No. 43 guy in them, doing everything right, every day. Like, who the hell is 43?

Owen who?!? Michaels?

How could a guy fresh out of college, they must have wondered, be so advanced in Babcock’s system, when it is completely new to all of us?

“Maybe a little bit of a cheat code,” admitted Pat Ferschweiler, Michaels' head coach for the past three seasons at Western Michigan University and perhaps a bit of a Babcock disciple, “is that I was in Detroit's system with Grand Rapids when Babs was the head coach of Detroit.

“Some of our terminology, our phrasing, our systems, our thoughts on what's important, how to win… There are some similarities there that certainly make Owen feel comfortable and at home in the systems and the things that Babs is talking about. They're important here (at UWM). I think similar things are valued there by coach Babcock.”

It's crazy to think that an undrafted 24-year-old........

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