Edmonton Oilers Succumb 3-0 To Shark Attack

This Edmonton Oilers game was a little hard to watch, losing 3-0 to San Jose. And by that I mean the Oilers lacked the ability to finish off chances, tonight, while the Sharks played with a lead on the 2nd of back-to-back road games the way all teams should. Even San Jose was missing a step, the Sharks out-thought the Oilers, and did a particularly good job of chipping the puck out of danger…especially over the final 10 minutes or so. And that…is what good, veteran teams do with a lead. Observe and learn.

9 Things

9. Patrick Maroon continues to impress. He played 16:40 tonight, had 4 hits, 2 shots, and did a nice job of providing a net-front presence on a number of occasions. He may have been the Edmonton Oilers best skater Tuesday night.

8. I didn’t expect Harry Howell when we picked Adam Clendening off the waiver wire. But we did get a player with some up-side, offensively. Tuesday night, Clendening led his team in possession by a wide margin (78%) during 20:55 of TOI.

7. Griffin Reinhart had some decent moments moving the puck, Tuesday night, but he also had a few all-too-indecisive moments while defending. And that is one of the knocks against this guy that the kid has to shake if he is going to stick.

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6. Over-all tonight, its important to note that a team whose defence is made up of two rookies, two waiver claims, a 5th guy who spent part of the year in the AHL, and Andrej Sekera…limited the San Jose Sharks to 22 shots. That’s not a bad defensive performance from this lot.

5. The Edmonton Oilers needed to come out with a better effort against a team playing on the 2nd of back-to-back nights. Now, the Oilers did generally out-play and out-shoot the sharks. But San Jose had better finish, and in more than just the offensive aspect of their game, than their opposition did.

4. The Edmonton Oilers Power Play is now 1 for it’s last 27 opportunities. It is difficult to beat good teams when your special teams let you down, like that, and San Jose is a good team. The lack of a shot threat from the blue-line is, to me, the biggest issue the Oilers man advantage faces.

3. When you’ve scored no goals, it is not the goaltending that is letting your team down. The 1st San Jose goal was a bad one, for sure. It’s one that Cam Talbot usually has…especially as of late, when he has been lights out. But Talbot also made a number of saves that ranked near spectacular, as his team was trying to get back in it.

2. I am not near as harsh of a critic of Lauri Korpikoski as some. I actually believe that he is an entirely serviceable 4th liner and penalty killer. But to leave him on a line with Connor McDavid and Jordan Eberle as long as Todd McLellan did tonight was not helping his team win. 97 and 14 got on track only after the 3rd Period line shuffle. It’s not really a criticism of Korpikoski’s game, he is what he is.

1. O.K., The Darnell Nurse fight. There are people who are against fighting in hockey, I get it, and you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. That said: After a long, long decade of watching the Edmonton Oilers struggle to stick up for one another, how refreshing was it to watch a player take umbrage with how a teammate was checked into the boards, and actually DO something tangible about it? For 10 years, teams have skated into Rexall Place knowing that their opposition would not be especially hard to play against. Maybe that’s finally changing?

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And we are to criticize one of our players for trying to bring about that change? Boy, if your answer is yes, I sure don’t see it your way. My initial view, live, saw the hit more violent than the replays. But while the referees got the call right, it was still a disregard for the safety of Matt Hendricks on Roman Polak‘s part. And Hendricks is a guy who has stood up for a lot of his teammates the past couple years. It’s about damn time someone else stepped up. And don’t think that anyone in that dressing room didn’t notice.

On to Minnesota.

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