Edmonton Oilers Get “Goalied” In Loss To The Lightning

The Edmonton Oilers winning streak comes to an end as they lost 7-4 to the Tampa Bay Lightning last night. The Oilers in my opinion played an excellent game, but they were stymied by a more excellent Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The Edmonton Oilers were able to fire 57 shots against and only 4 of them went past the All-Star calibre goalie. The main issue in my opinion was the play of Stuart Skinner, whose two soft goals caused the Oilers to lose this game.

I knew the Edmonton Oilers had to lose eventually cause they weren’t going to win out this season. The fact they lost in a game where they controlled the play the majority of the time is the best way that they could have lost I guess.

According to Natural Stat Trick the Edmonton Oilers owned the Lightning in every analytics category. They had more than twice as many scoring chances for by a 54/23 margin. The high danger chances are more onesided in the Oilers favour 28 to 8.

The stat that shows that this game was won and lost by the goalies is the expected goals category. The Edmonton Oilers were expected to score 7.41 goals but only scored 4 which means Vasilevskiy saved an extra 3 goals. The Lightning were only expected to score 2.93 goals, which means Skinner allowed an extra 4 goals. That was the difference in the game.

Edmonton Oilers Positives

• Bouchard and McDavid extended their point streaks. Bouchard now has a 13-game point streak and McDavid has a 10-game streak.
• Darnel Nurse scored a nice shorthanded goal that started the Oilers comeback.
• Oilers Powerplay bumped at 50% scoring twice on four opportunities.
• Hyman continues to put the puck in the net.
• 57 shots on goal.

Edmonton Oilers Negatives

• Allowed 5 goals in the third period, can’t expect to win when you do that.
• Skinner let in a couple of soft goals which if saved would have changed this game.
• The McLeod, Kane, and Brown line needs to be better they created nothing.
• Stamkos scored 4 goals.
• Penalty kill percentage of 50% isn’t the best, but the Lightning have a good powerplay

The Edmonton Oilers will look to bounce back on Saturday as the Florida Panthers are in town. The game is scheduled to start at 8 PM. The Oilers can’t afford for this one loss to turn into a streak, so they need to bounce back and win tomorrow.