Edmonton Oilers: What Went Wrong Against the Minnesota Wild?

The Minnesota Wild handed the Edmonton Oilers their fifth straight loss with a 3-0 shutout performance last night.

So the Edmonton Oilers got shut out last night by the Minnesota Wild. Their losing streak of 5 games continues as their season winds down by the end of this week. Truth be told it seemed like they were playing this game as their season finale.

The fact that they lost 3-0 to a team that just clinched a playoff spot from this win goes to show that the Oilers had mailed it in. You have to give some credit to Cam Talbot for keeping his team in the game for the most part since he did give up two goals but made a crazy amount of saves.

The NHL officials also played a hand in the Oilers’ loss last night as well. There were countless times in the game of some of the Oilers including Connor McDavid getting slashed all night long, and all they get is two power-play opportunities?

Really? There was even a no-call when McDavid tried to score a goal in the first period, and Zach Parise slashed McDavid’s hand and collapsed on him so he wouldn’t score the goal. The fact that the referees didn’t bother stopping the play and penalized the Wild for that stupid foul goes to show that nothing was going the Oilers way last night.

Recap

Giving up 40 shots on net is ridiculous for the Edmonton Oilers especially since they only had 22 chances on their end to try to score a goal. But what hurt the Oilers more than anything was their defencemen as they seemed a bit confused for most of the night.

Adam Larsson coughed up a costly turnover in the first period which allowed Zach Parise to score the first goal. There were plenty of other times in the game where he mistimed his checks or blew some of his defensive assignments which allowed the Minnesota Wild to get some scoring chances.

A lot of the core players from the Edmonton Oilers were all in the minus department in the plus/minus category. Players like Ty Rattie, Leon Draisaitl, Anton Slepyshev, Connor McDavid and the rest of the defensive core.

Coughing up the puck and letting the opposition beat you to clean shots on your net makes everybody question your competitive edge. With only two games left in the season, will the Edmonton Oilers make any effort to try to win a game?

Or will they be contempt in just allowing their opponents to have 60 minutes to do what they want on the ice?