Edmonton Oilers Ragged On Defence In 7-4 Loss
The Edmonton Oilers learned a few valuable lessons tonight, in a 7-4 loss to the Washington Capitals…and so did their fans.
One, when you do not put forth a solid defensive effort in today’s NHL, you will way more often than not pay the price for that negligence. And Two, the path to success is never a straight line.
Edmonton Oilers fans should understand that tonight was not an indictment of their team and the progress that they have or haven’t made, to date. Rather, it was a step back that middle-of-the-road teams will inevitably make along the way to “better”.
Too bad, too…as they had the Capitals, on the second of back-to-back road games, 3rd game in 4 nights, and with their back-up goaltender in net. In the end, they only took advantage of 1 of the 3. Missed opportunity.
9 Things:
9. Young Anton Slepyshev was one of the few Edmonton Oilers who deserved a passing grade tonight. Slepyshev skated well, injected effort into each shift, and tallied his 1st ever NHL point (an assist). His almost 13 minutes of TOI was an indication of how his coach felt that he was playing.
8. No one will (or should) blame Anders Nilsson for this loss, as he was for the most part hung out to dry in this one. What I WILL say, however, if that when the game was still within reach, Nilsson failed to deliver “that save”. When the game is still in reach, you sometimes need your goalie to “steal one”. He didn’t.
7. Well before the first puck was dropped, tonight, the head coach of The Edmonton Oilers said that his team could not afford to take as many penalties against the Capitals that they did against Detroit. Well, they took 8 minutes worth, which is too much against a power play like Washington’s. And it showed.
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6. Some nights, even when you do the right thing, it does not turn out well. Case in point: With 8 minutes left in the 1st, Eric Gryba was run into the end boards. There should have been a call, but there was not. Andrew Ference jumps to his defence, as fans have begged the Oilers to do for years, and the Zebras inexplicably take a single player to the box for it.
5. From a possession standpoint, the Edmonton Oilers were actually better than they were against Detroit. And typically, 4 goals in this league in 2015 should be enough to win a game. But the team defence from the very first shift was ragged, reminiscent more of what we watched last season than what we had enjoyed up until this point this season. Be better.
4. You will not have seen this at home, but there were a fair number of empty seats in the lower bowl tonight. Oh, they showed up. But at one point, someone downstairs put the Blue Jays game on the big screen in the bar down below, and at least a dozen people from my section went down there and stayed down there. There were several hundred more, too. Their hopes of better results were dashed.
3. There is an element of the fan base that will blame Taylor Hall each time this team takes a step back. Some nights, fair enough, but honestly? Not tonight. Taylor Hall created double the chances than he allowed, leading BOTH teams in that category, and answered back physically after the uneven penalty call against Ference in the 1st. His best game? Hardly. But if you think Taylor Hall was the problem tonight, think again.
2. I should have known. I should have known that, as I drove to Rexall listening to the pre-game shows on radio, that the praise for how significantly Justin Schultz has turned around his game this season would come back to burn him. But to be fair, BOTH Justin Schultz and Oscar Klefbom had their worst games of the season. For the first time this year, I believe, Schultz did not lead his team in TOI…Andrej Sekera did, with marginally better results.
1. The line of Connor McDavid, Nail Yakupov and Benoit Pouliot was again by my eye the Edmonton Oilers best, on Friday night. Each of them created significantly more than they gave up against the Capitals. And while Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was named 2nd Star on the night, it easily could have McDavid, who was again dangerous each time he stepped on the ice. Having said that, it was not exactly a Monet painted by the kid tonight, and he knows it. It was that kind of night at Rexall Place.
There were a couple Edmonton Oilers, in particular, that failed to show up on Friday night. As referenced, it is those same players that will be having one-on-one chats with the coach tomorrow.
See…the trick about playing better, as the Oilers have, is that expectations are now higher. And trading punches with a team like Washington is not a strategy.