The Edmonton Oilers suffered their second straight loss this time against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Connor McDavid finally tallied his 100th point of the season.
After their three-game losing streak ended on Sunday against the Anaheim Ducks in overtime, the Edmonton Oilers got trampled on by the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday night. It was one of the worst performances that this team had all year-long. When a team usually loses 7-3 in a regular season game, a lot of pointing is directed towards the goalie.
But this time, you can’t fault Cam Talbot for this specific beatdown that the Oilers received by a playoff team like the Blue Jackets. This breakdown squares solely on the rest of the team for not playing consistently for all three periods.
The Edmonton Oilers scored the first three goals of the game in the first period. They attacked the Blue Jackets in waves starting with Connor McDavid aggressively trying to score or assist on goals. He accomplished that by assisting on Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Drake Caggiula’s goals while he was also adding in his own short-handed goal.
Even though that helped the team establish a dominant lead at the midway point of the first period, it also cost them for the remainder of the game. Their competitive juices evaporated as soon as the Blue Jackets got in the game after their third goal in the first period.
Issues
And that has been the issue for the Edmonton Oilers all season long, when they are faced with a scenario that isn’t going their way, then they tuck their tails and call it a night. There were a handful of scoring opportunities for the Oilers to get back at this game but they weren’t good quality ones that they have capitalized in the past. It seemed like this team was relying on their top two lines to bail them out once again and last night was one of those times that it wasn’t going to happen.
It seemed like the Edmonton Oilers were puck watching for most of the second and third period, instead of aggressively continue to forecheck and backcheck their opponents to create scoring chances. Even though both teams had the same amount of shot attempts for the game, the Columbus Blue Jackets had an easier time getting quality shots with their crisp passing in the Oilers zone.
In the last two games, the Edmonton Oilers have given up 16 goals which are unacceptable. This team can’t leave their goalie Cam Talbot taking all of the blame for their failures if they can’t do their jobs and play defense for 60 full minutes.
They’ll have an easier matchup against the Vancouver Canucks tomorrow night, so we’ll see if they can bounce back with a win.