A look at Thursday night’s tough 4-3 loss to the Dallas Stars, as the Edmonton Oilers remain winless at Rogers Place in 2023-24.
So much for building on the momentum from Sunday’s 5-2 win versus the Flames. Instead, the Oilers fell flat on their faces against the Stars, and lost 4-3 on Thursday night in Edmonton.
As a result, the Oilers dropped to 2-6-1 with 10 percent of the regular season now completed. They find themselves stuck on five points, which is the tied-second-worst total in the NHL as of Friday morning.
Where the Oilers go from here is anyone’s guess, but saying it’s still early is not going to cut it anymore. Here are three takeaways from the game at Rogers Place, where they remain winless thus far in 2023-24:
1) Opportunities galore but no finishing touch
If you want to talk about just simple shots on goal, then yes, the Oilers dominated 49-27. However, it doesn’t matter how many opportunities you manufacture, if you don’t take advantage of them.
This speaks to an ongoing issue for the Oilers in 2023-24, with them just not being clinical enough with their chances. The reality is they were down 4-1 with just 10 minutes remaining, before managing to make a game of it.
It’s very rare that the Oilers’ two superstars will not have even one point between them at the end of a game. However, that’s exactly what happened to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on Thursday night.
Helping to highlight just how much this team is struggling right now, they went 0-for-4 on the power play. This would be the same power play unit which just last season had a record-breaking efficiency.
In addition, it often seems that when a team is struggling, they have no luck whatsoever. This was summed up during a second period power play, when Evan Bouchard was set up twice by Draisaitl, but both times hit iron.
Everyone knows the Oilers are better than they’re showing right now, but the offence just isn’t getting it done. A team which led the NHL in scoring last season, ranks a lowly 25th at the time of posting.
As much as it ultimately didn’t help on the night, at least Sam Gagner made a triumphant return, scoring two goals in the final period and making the game more interesting. It is somewhat poignant he made an immediate impact on the same night a still scoreless Connor Brown left the game with an apparent injury.
It’s also encouraging that Evander Kane continued his recent revival, with a goal and an assist versus the Stars. Further encouragement comes from how well Kane repeatedly linked up with Gagner, but as a whole, the offence still has plenty of work to do, to get back to last season’s standards. (Or at least close.)